


Dead Men Cast Shadows

by 8TimesTheCharm



Series: San Andreas Faults [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: D.Vinity, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Gen, ITS A SEQUEL YOU GUYS, Past Anahardt, Pharmercy, cameofest if you know what ur lookin for, dva aggressively befriends widowmaker and sombra, eventual spiderbyte, past reaper76, please give it a chance, tech rabbit, that ot3 shiptag mess is probably a new one for this site, that's for the other ships, this is a GTA AU, why did i do this to myself, writing to reflect GTA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-01-18 08:11:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 31,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12384312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8TimesTheCharm/pseuds/8TimesTheCharm
Summary: Sequel to Old Secrets Die Hard, set 3 months later, where everyone is trying to settle back into civilian life. That is... until it turns out that Talon didn't go with Reyes, but simply went to a different man to lead, one who hates leaving loose ends. Amélie and Sombra must evade his attention, but are they simply backing into a corner?





	1. The Pursuit Begins

**Author's Note:**

> why do i keep doing this to myself

When Gabriel Reyes pulled the trigger on the shotgun pressed into his jaw, the one thought that passed through his head before oblivion was that of peace, the letting go of his ties. He had forgotten about one link that would have missed him were he to meet his demise, one that he did not care for beyond that of business, the vague pretence of a mentorship towards this particular relationship of sorts, but one that cared greatly about the wisdom, tactics and know-how passed from the old mercenary.

That same man, Akande Ogundimu, sat in the official PMC’s headquarters in Liberty City—ironic from what Gabriel had told him, of how his fall from Merryweather eventually turned into a phoenix-like ascension into Talon, in the same city that had torn him from his cosy position to begin with—watching the news and grimacing. Sombra and Amélie had vanished, Gabriel wasn’t answering his attempt at contact. The last he had heard was of Gabe dragging the finest sniper and the best intelligence gatherer Talon had to offer, chasing a grudge, chasing answers, chasing an end to the pain that he had suffered for years.

That was that, he supposed, as the newscaster prattled on about Merryweather and Gabriel Reyes’ remains found by FIB agents after committing suicide in what was a recycling plant in Blaine County. Away from civilians, away from collateral, that was one of the most important things Akande had learned; those who had not caused harm did not deserve harm either. But the disappearance of Widowmaker and Sombra was curious to say the least, one he was suspicious of.

It wasn’t long until his concern was justified; Akande caught a report on how the notorious Amélie Lacroix was set free on bail thanks to a very generous anonymous donor and the revelation that she never killed her husband to begin with. He was not an idiot, he could deduce well enough Sombra’s paws were all over this, considering the cost of bail and how Amélie had already effectively sundered any possible sympathetic contact by shooting at both Amaris; if Amélie was released by Sombra with Gérard’s death no longer on her, that essentially freed from her duty to Talon by proxy. Confirming this would take another while, but at least he still had access to their contact details—hopefully they would be a little privier to response than the now very dead Reyes.

Akande resolved to find out just what exactly happened, and if they had decided on abandoning Talon in the wake of Reyes’ death, to punish them. After all, Talon wasn’t _actually_ gone, it was just going through a reshuffle of leadership right now, with Akande replacing Gabriel.

* * *

Meanwhile, in a small house on Bridge Street, Mirror Park, back in Los Santos…

“Oh, you’re back! How was your trip, amiga?” Sombra perked up as the door opened, revealing a tired Amélie Lacroix wearily throwing her handbag onto the small counter table by the door.

“I’m not sure I’m entirely suited to be a talkative, vivacious Dryft driver,” she answered wearily, immediately walking to the humble wine rack in the kitchen and pulling a Marlowe 2013 bottle from its spot. She rolled her eyes when Sombra wrinkled her nose “I’m finished my shifts for the day, relax.”

“Crank that shit open then,” her roommate quipped, leaping to her feet and stretching her arms up and out “Save me a glass! Has your day been lame enough to merit the whole bottle?”

The bottle bubbled as red filled the bowl of the glass with a swirl, as Amélie wordlessly found another glass for her fellow ex-Talon member.

“Tourists are more inclined to remain quiet or talk among themselves, but people returning to Los Santos are quite eager to pry into my life, when not cancelling immediately seeing my face on their little app.”

The phone Sombra had left on her armchair suddenly whirred into life with a track that made a seldom-seen smile cross Amélie’s face. She chuckled and quirked a brow at her roommate “DJ Lúcio? I thought you hated him.”

“As D.Va’s moderator I fuckin’ hate him, but he makes good beats,” the hacker protested, dragging her heels towards her phone. The name on it made her pause for a second, recognising it as Reyes’ second-in-command he had left in Liberty City. What could he want? Talon was done, wasn’t it?

“Who’s calling?” Amélie asked, frowning. People seldom called her companion for anything bar a very select few people that she felt she could trust with her number.

“Oh, it’s just Mister Fister,” Sombra attempted to brush it off, plucking her phone up and answering “Moshi moshi.”

“ _Charming_.” Ah, it was Akande for sure; she knew that deep, powerful rumble anywhere—it always managed to impress her just how much of it was conveyed through phone quality, feeling it in her chest like she stood by a subwoofer. “ _Sombra, are you still in Los Santos? Amélie as well?_ ”

“Fisty!” she chirped, a little too affable for Amélie’s liking as she watched the Frenchwoman’s expression utterly flip into paranoia “How ya been? Yeah, uh, I guess you could say that? You still in Liberty?”

“ _Can you confirm that Reyes is dead? It isn’t the first time he’s been reported as such, with North Yankton and the like, but considering the resources in Los Santos suddenly evaporating it seems more definite. Come clean, hacker. Is he dead? Amélie had been released from prison on condition of bail and also no longer acting under Talon. Where is she?_ ”

“Whoa, whoa—hooold up big guy, one question at a time! I know you were out of the loop for a little while; things got, uh, kinda crazy.” She was stalling, deliberately, and she felt a thin bead of sweat on her brow forming since if anyone was astute enough to tell this over a phone conversation on the opposite end of the country, it was motherfucking Akande Ogundimu. Fuck.

“ _Okay. Given you must be adjusting to being a civilian if you cannot answer such simple questions, something clearly has occurred--_.”

“Aright aright wait a fuckin’ sec! Reyes blew his brains out, yeah, Amélie was there and he told her the truth about Gérard—did you even know that Reyes tore him to shreds to blackmail her!?”

“ _Not his proudest moment_.”

“Not his--! JESUS, Akande, he ruined her life and indoctrinated her, least she was owed by him was a fuckin’ escape out of the mercenary life, don’tcha think?!”

There was a silence. Sombra fucking hated how good he was at casually prying her out of her comfortable zone, striking deep with practice and eking out the truth at his leisure. Not being behind a computer keyboard was a major inhibitor to her usual ability, and she was painfully aware of this weakness. Unfortunately, Akande knew it quite well too.

“… _so you helped her out of jail, hmm? Are you playing coy and trying to pretend you also didn’t want to slip away in the chaos?_ ” Before she could interject, he chuckled gently; this was a sound that would sound almost reassuring and lulling to some with the thrum it provided, but for her this was the lion smiling before he was about to clamp his teeth on the neck of wounded prey “ _You seem to do an awful lot for this poor, troubled woman. It almost seems like you’re quite fond of her_.”

Sombra growled, and spun away from Amélie who was trying to lunge over and hang the phone up—not that it’d delay Akande any, he’d call constantly until he found what he wanted.

“Whatever jefe, what’s it to you? Talon’s gone, so what?”

“ _It’s not gone. You forgot that quite a lot of it is still left and active in Liberty City. It won’t take me long to find you and wrap up loose ends._ ”

“Good luck, we’re behind several fucking proxies!” she shouted into the phone, hanging up and flinging it into the cradle of the armchair, staring it down as if daring him to call back. He didn’t. That meant he _had_ his answer, and while the immediate aftermath meant peace from his smug purr, that simultaneously meant immense danger was to come. He was going to start looking for them, and all she could hope for was that her new employers in the FIB would cover her ass—they’d better, or government secrets might start bleeding out.

That is, if he didn’t stop them mid transmission.

Oohhhh it was gonna be a _long_ , _**long** week_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unter and Dryft are obvious GTA-themed stand-ins for the rideshare companies :V I went to LA for the first time so I'm feeling mighty inspired for this!
> 
> EDIT: fuck me i've clearly been thinking too hard about LA i accidentally wrote 'Angeles' instead of Santos lmao WELL THATS FIXED


	2. Weighty Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few more faces pop up; Sombra begs for help from her new FIB employers, McCree tries to have a deep talk with a headstone.

_“Good luck, we’re behind several fucking proxies!”_

Doomfist hummed thoughtfully as he mulled on the last thing Sombra screeched at him, pondering what weight that could have held. He certainly enjoyed annoying her which was a rare gift considering that was generally her preferred hobby among the ranks of Talon, but the call just now was rather elucidating.

Sombra had been part of the mercenary force, hired as ‘cyber security’ for the sake of explaining to the tax man what she did, when she was more anti-cyber security for others. Her recruitment was perhaps a year after Amélie’s—2011 most likely, he surmised as he tried to recall, when his own tenure started in 2002 at the earliest—and he noticed a certain admiration, like that of a teen fan of some no-nonsense pop songstress with her own gravitas or something. Not that Akande would be the best reference for chart topping singers, he went by whatever aural rubbish the hacker had exposed them to en route to their target, when she was part of any intelligence gathering mission.

Still, whenever the paths of Amélie Lacroix and, well, Sombra crossed in his view, he thought it was relatively benign hero worship of a sort. Now he had some inkling there was more yearning behind it, but when Amélie’s heart was raw from the revelation about Reyes and Gérard, poor Sombra had no hope. He felt a little sorry for her, though perhaps once he had either brought them back into the fold of Talon or, something he was genuinely less keen on, killing them to tie up loose ends, perhaps she had the chance to be around her then in such capacity.

“The use of ‘proxies’ is interesting. She must have a new employer.” Work would continue on pinning down who that might be, but Akande was a patient man. Talon could still operate albeit at limited capacity compared to its past zenith. Despite Sombra’s boast of ‘several fucking proxies’, he knew her last movements were in San Andreas—that’s where his search would begin.

* * *

“Eeeeeeeello ello ello? Izzit my fave purple hacker?”

“ _Lena fucking Oxton! Am I glad to hear your voice!_ ”

The MI7 agent’s expression withered a little as she nestled the phone between her ear and shoulder, idly browsing Perseus’ online store for new threads in the downtime she had. The tone Sombra had indicated she wanted something, as if a new job with the FIB overlooking her actions with Talon wasn’t enough.

“Whatcha want, pet? You don’t call unless you want a favour.”

“ _Talon’s still kicking, y’know that? Reyes’ death didn’t leave a vacuum for long, his second-in-command Akande Ogundimu popped in before Gabe’s brain matter had a chance to cool--_.”

“Gross _and_ disrespectful! A new record.”

“ _—Forgive me for not really giving a shit when Akande’s threatening to track me and Amélie down! He’s gonna either try force us back into Talon since that shit’s apparently a life sentence in his eyes, or he’ll kill us if we refuse. Motherfucker’s still pissing around Liberty City assertin’ himself as the new honcho, so if you could either interrupt him or turn him back or whatever, you won’t have a dead as fuck purple hacker on your hands_.”

Lena leaned back in her desk chair and ruffled her short dark hair with her free hand, humming and hawing. Winston’s scruffy head peeped up from another desk some distance down the hall over mountains of papers, and she rolled her eyes and mouthed ‘Sombra’ in a decidedly over the top manner, causing him to chuckle and shake his head.

“Alright, alright, well… that’s a surprise to hear they’re still kickin’ around, but I’ll admit I’ve been so focused on the Reyes end of things. Didn’t even occur to me to think there’d be any other personalities able to hold the skeleton of Talon together afterward.” Lena swapped the phone to her other ear as she yanked out a notebook and a pen “Gimme the number he was calling from, and we’ll arrange a little clandestine meeting and take care of him one way or another.”

“ _Ohhh, you’re the best co-workers I could ask for!” was the elated response from the other end “I can’t wait to tell Amélie she can totally chill the fuck out when you’re done._ ”

“Some hell of a job when you’re asking your new co-workers to get rid of the old ones! I’ll give you a bell later. Tata for now!”

* * *

A day later…

Morningwood Cemetery stood as quiet as ever, a miraculous ability when the chaos of Los Santos continued indefinitely around it. People visited it, sure, and in numbers when another dear to them died either naturally, or more frequently, unnaturally with the bullets still sitting in their body. It was sparsely populated by the living at this moment, bar one lone man from Blaine County visiting the grave of his estranged adoptive father.

“Hey, uh, pops. Should I still call you pops? I know I ain’t seen you again since I was real small, but—y’know, you were still important to me back then.”

Jesse McCree huffed and rubbed his neck with a frown as he doffed his hat, glad for the emptiness of the graveyard so no one could witness him trying to have a meaningful conversation with a headstone.

“Pa’s still kickin’, but he’s been real down. I guess whatever way your last talk went, nothin’s gonna get by you blowin’ your fuckin’ head off. I dunno. You both saw loads of shit back in the Merryweather days, that much I’m sure and ‘specially since Ana n’ Rein explained plenty. It’s different when someone y’love just ends it all right in front of ya.” He paused to consider his words, fingers curling into the brim of his broad cowboy hat “I guess… it woulda been nice to sit and talk to you, but things changed a lot. You almost got Faree killed in the crossfire. I dunno if I can get by that neither; she was always like a lil sister to me.”

Well, this was a bit of a poor way to try and readdress the gulf of a relationship between himself and a dead man, but Jesse was goddamn trying his best.

“Man I’m fuckin’ awful at this shit. I’m sorry pops, but I hope now you’re finally at peace y’know?”

“Oh, you knew Gabriel too?”

The voice made the wannabe cowboy leap almost wholly out of his boots with a shriek “Holy mother of pigslappin’ Jesus! Y’scared the blue outta my jeans…!”

“My apologies,” the deep thrum of a voice answered, and McCree squinted to get a better view of his sudden companion. He was met by a colossal man with an accent that he could only place from beyond the southern half of the Atlantic Ocean, with eyes that seemed to read him. “I am Akande. I worked with Gabriel.”

Jesse pulled himself out of his jumpscare reverie slowly, maintaining eye contact and a healthy wariness when he heard that particular snippet “Co-workers huh? I’m gonna presume Talon then, since you look about my age and hella young for Merryweather.”

“Correct,” Akande answered with a polite smile and a nod “You must be a relative?”

“Uh, in a manner o’speakin’. I’m the boy he found in a burnin’ home during the USA-Australia war back in the early 80’s with Jack Morrison. They raised me, til, well, you know that part I’m guessin’.”

“Ahh! Jesse McCree, I see. It’s wonderful to meet you. Gabriel did not mention family much, but when he did you were usually first to be brought up. He would be extremely proud to see you today, I’m sure.”

McCree just gave him a pained smile, not feeling it to be terribly appropriate to mansplain how ‘ _well actually, my remainin’ dad keeps tellin’ me I’m wastin’ my life pursuing a vigilante fantasy_ ’ or whatever. It was probably time to get out of there.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure, but I gotta drop by family and say hi. Nice meetin’ ya Akande,” the self-styled cowboy plonked his hat back on and swaggered off in the direction of Vespucci. Akande watched him for a while, before returning his look to the headstone.

“He may have turned out a little better were you still around to raise him, but obviously we can’t change that. I’ll pay a visit to Jack and see how he’s fared for you.” The Talon leader nodded to himself, idly cracking his knuckles and looking eastwards, having received a message from Sombra to meet where the old warehouse was. He had an inkling there was a trap being laid for him, but he had experienced far worse where he had been deployed further afield.

 


	3. Ambush Foiled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akande Ogundimu goes to the old Vagos-Talon warehouse hoping to meet Sombra, but receives Winston and Lena instead.

Dry dirt crunched under Akande’s sandals as he walked into the warehouse that three months prior, had been blown up by FIB agents seeking to undermine Talon’s presence in the city. Reconstruction had begun already, though it was a long way off from being usable to anyone, cluttered with debris and idle bulldozers, excavators and the beginnings of a crane. A curious place for Sombra to request the meeting, especially because of what a wonderful ambush location this could make—and just as the thought crossed his mind, not Sombra, but a very different woman stepped out ahead of him. She was built like a greyhound, short spikey hair and hideous footwear completing her curious wear.

“You that Akande Ogundimu chap?”

_Englishwoman_? “What of it?”

“You’re threatenin’ an agent, so we’re gonna have to take you in,” she answered, as a hulking mass of man joined her side, glaring from behind his comically undersized glasses at him.

“What agent? Sombra’s your agent now?” Akande replied with a smile and a very lackadaisical pose, in defiance of the thinly veiled hostility the two were regarding him with “And who are you, government then? I had a feeling she found shelter with someone, but government agents…?”

“FIB,” the thickly bearded fellow rumbled at him, showing his identification, with the woman mimicking him but for the initials being ‘MI7’ instead “You’re toeing a dangerous line Akande—forget this little campaign and we’ll leave your base in Liberty City alone too. We tracked you here through the phone you called her with.”

The Talon agent folded his arms and let out a rich laugh, shaking his head “Ah, Sombra! Ever the slippery trickster. This is why she was so useful to Talon, and what a boon to your side she’d be! That’s why I simply can’t allow that. With all respect, I don’t wish to kill you, but I’ll have to hurt you within an inch of your lives if you try to stop me.”

“This’d be easier if we had clearance t’just pop ya and be facking _done_ wiv it,” the woman grumbled, pulling out a taser with all of the enthusiasm of a grumpy child coaxed to school. Akande didn’t even try to get into anything resembling a stance, simply shrugging and in one swift, subtle movement slightly swerved to let Winston’s momentum send the hulking man spiralling into a fall made of his own hubris.

“Really, government agents and this is your approach?” he mocked, crouching and watching Winston dive face first into the dirt with faint amusement. Frustrated, the FIB agent gathered himself up, only to get soundly pummelled in the face by Akande’s frighteningly powerful piston punch, completely and utterly discombobulating his brain matter and sending him twirling to the ground.

“Oh, **_bollocks_**!” Lena hissed, worrisomely glancing between Winston’s prone body as he tried to pick himself up and shake his jarred focus back together, and the confident approach of their target towards her. Praying that speed would be her advantage on her side, she sprung back with a gazelle’s leap, running around the piles of construction material dotted around the area and keeping distance between him and her, trying to buy time for Winston.

“Come now, I thought you were to take me in?” Akande asked, perhaps a little genuinely puzzled at the U-turn of tactics, hopping between his feet as if warming up, like this confrontation was a mere exercise. “You know I have been extraordinarily talented in the art of boxing; you seem unprepared for it. In any case you are not on my list, I have no direct quarrel with you, but I will defend myself as I see fit.”

He casually tore down the piles of bricks and bags of cement between him and Lena, batting away the debris that she frantically threw in his path to slow him down, to distract and to try and get a good angle from which she could safely tase him without getting brutally maimed in the process. Desperately, Tracer lunged at a wall to try and scrabble to a height he couldn’t feasibly climb on, and only for Winston’s timely interruption did she manage to get up on a corrugated iron sheet wall where she had front row standing tickets to seeing her fellow agent get his cranium rattled gruesomely by a right hook like that of an angry god smiting an impudent mortal. The man that she had known as an unstoppable mass crumpled to the dirt with his eyes rolled back into his skull, probably still reverberating with the force of the punch.

Akande slowly turned to look placidly at Lena, who shrieked at an even higher shrill “Oh. **_BOLLOCKS_**!”

Better hope her partial parkour knowledge would serve her well—her smaller frame and dexterity should see her through obstacles that the hulking Talon agent couldn’t brawn his way through—as she scuttled across the construction vehicles left idle for the next working day. The broad west-side roof almost shone with an aura of salvation, a perfect ledge from which she could leap of faith onto the back of Akande--but found his rough palm on the scruff of her neck yanking her hard to the earth and reality once more.

The struggle that ensued was not unlike watching a deer trying to scurry free from the jaws of a crocodile, idle and contented as its prey fought in vain and only ended up burning itself out. Akande merely watched as Lena screeched and howled and flailed in frenzied clawing and wild swings, ignoring anything that even slightly registered as pain, not that there were many instances. He hadn’t come to Los Santos alone, and his medical ‘upgrades’ that his good friend from Ireland provided had galvanised his natural resistance to injury.

“Are you done?”

“You fucking _**son of a bitch**_ , do you know who you’re messing with!? Let go of me you _**twat**_ uppercutter—just you wait! I’ll have your balls for _tree baubles_ you _absolute_ **_cunt_** \--!”

He raised her up, her entire body clearing from the ground, and she waved her arms and legs in a sputtering panic until Akande brought her back down, and all she knew was agony for a brief second before the rock her temple hit forcibly knocked her unconscious.

The man stood, looking over his handiwork and flexing his trusty right hand idly, shaking out the ripples he had felt from the Englishwoman’s torso—who knew shattering ribs could echo through his hand like that? It was an interesting lesson, but nevertheless he had sworn to minimise the collateral as much as possible, dialling 911 and nonchalantly giving the location of two severely injured agents for FIB and MI7 as he left. Just as he got into his Vagos-supplied car, his phone went off again and with a frown he answered.

“Ogundimu.”

“ _Hiiiii pet, did you get a hold of our hacker_?”

“No. She’s managed to get in with government agents; I have dispatched them non-lethally, or at least I think I did. The Englishwoman is frailer than I thought.”

“ _Are you sure she’s frail or did my augments just do you a favour?_ ” the purr from the other end of the line asked with a counter-question. He could almost hear the woman twirl the cable around her finger like she was playing hard to get with someone she was intimately interested in, but as far as Akande knew, this woman’s sole interest was a little too out there for his own liking. He turned towards his safe house hidden in the Vagos-held corner of the Elysian docklands “We’ll measure those metrics later, O’Deorain. I’d like to find Sombra and Lacroix before we fill up your notes on my performance.”

“ _Well, if you just pulled away the aul security blanket, it won’t be long before the dears fall into our lap. I’ll get the next flight out and book a room; you know I’ve got my own eye on Los Santos for my own reasons_.”

“Don’t eclipse my mission with your flights of fancy.”

“ _You know Ms Ziegler was why Reyes couldn’t show his face in public again? That’s why I shadowed her medical education for a little while. I’d love to see if she’s still practicing here_.”

“One thing at a time, Moira, one thing at a time. Business first, pleasure later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes as soon as Moira got announced she's getting flung into this fic what do you want from me


	4. Collateral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ambush outcome becomes apparent to Sombra thanks to an extremely foulmouthed Korean internet star.

It was the most agonising wait Sombra had to endure, her hands restless and fidgeting with just about anything and everything that wasn’t bolted to the ground around the tiny Mirror Park house that her and Amélie now called home. Just as she gave up hearing on some kind of progress with getting rid of Akande from her trail, a buzzing sound whirred into life from the kitchen, which was in the opposite end of the house from where she was, kicking her legs against the bed and staring up at the ceiling. The ringtone barely got through the first chorus when she launched herself across two doorways and almost tackled Amélie en route, snatching the phone from the countertop beside the main door as she crashed to the floor and answered.

“Moshi moshi?”

“ _Who the fuck—Is that you Sombra? Purple fucker?_ ”

Oh, that wasn’t Tracer at all, and it definitely wasn’t Winston from how the voice sounded. Confused, Sombra stood up and ignored Amélie cursing up a Francophone storm about how she could have almost broken something with her clumsy spiralling through the house, thank you very much. In fact, this sounded a bit like…

“D.Va? Hana Song?”

“ _Yeah **dickweed** , if you’re wondering why I’m calling you, I got this number from eomma through Tracer. You know what you just fucking did?!_”

“Uh, I asked my co-worker to get my back because my last employer’s a fucking nightmare…?”

“ _You got Tracer put in the fucking ICU **you dumb fucking asshole**!_ ”

“ _Hijo de puta_ , do you _want_ me to get killed by Akande ‘Doomfist’ Ogundimu then!? He was Gabriel Reyes’ right hand man and the new head honcho of Talon! Excuse me _princess_ , but I like this new life away from Talon, and I’m pretty sure Amélie _FUCKING_ Lacroix deserves a peaceful civilian life after what she was put through, so I told the dude to fuck off since he said we had to rejoin or die--!”

“ _Did you antagonise a guy who is nicknamed **DOOMFIST**!? You are a completely fucking moronic motherfucker, holy shit!_ ”

Spanish and Korean of an incredibly violent and virulent manner filled the air for a couple of moments, verbally fencing with one another even if neither end of the phone had a veritable clue what the hell the other was saying, until ever patiently, Amélie plucked the cellphone from Sombra’s hands—finding the hacker very compliant, since it slid with no resistance from her grip—and smoothly answered “Ms Song, this is not the outcome any of us wanted. We would’ve vastly preferred if Mr Ogundimu left us alone, as much as I’m finding it hard to adjust to life away from the mercenary’s way. I think I need to speak to your—is she your guardian now, Fareeha?”

Whatever fury Hana had fuelled up and ready to go evaporated when the quiet, solemn though dulcet tones of the Frenchwoman carried across the line. The silence that muted her was awkward; how could it not be when merely 12 or so weeks ago she had been punching the _shit_ out of the former Talon sniper for shooting Fareeha? Hell, it was _bizarre_ to have her talking so politely about her as if she didn’t almost kill her super cool eomma back then. She wasn’t sure how her big buff Egyptian host mom felt about Amélie after Reyes was buried, and it probably wasn’t a good idea to start speculating. As for Hana herself, she was mixed about Amélie and that was being very generous to begin with.

“If it’s not too bold of me. I understand if she doesn’t want to look at me ever again,” Amélie went on, her tone of voice bitter and angry at herself. “And to be honest, even asking for help beyond our own means is quite an absurd ask. You know what, Ms Song… never mind; pretend we did not ask for your assistance.”

“ _H-hey wait, uhm. Ms Lacroix don’t hang up a sec—I remember Lena saying she had big hopes for you returning to a normal life and stuff._ ”

“Ah, did she?” _What an annoying woman_ , Amélie thought with a roll of her eyes, but her heart was always that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ type to belong to avid believers in the good of others. There was a bittersweet smile on her face that Sombra noticed “A shame that I have let her down by indirectly causing her such injury, but what’s new? I have a gravitational field around which misery and pain orbit me.”

“ _Oh—well, no, but—hey look, I’ll mention it to eomma 1 and eomma 2 at least? I—I mean I still feel kinda bad for trying to break your nose way back in the recycling plant_ ,” Hana began, immediately feeling lightyears of awkward to the point her stomach was coiling on itself from the kind of embarrassment that demanded her existence fold up upon itself and cancel her entire being out.

“I deserved that,” Amélie serenely replied, planting her free hand on Sombra’s face, firmly pressing her palm over her mouth, once the hacker instantly flared into life about to go on a tirade of how she did not deserve to have a pretty face broken like that at all.

“ _Nothing’s ever that straightforward, c’mon! Look, because this guy has fucked with Lena and big guy Winston, it kinda feels like it’s our problem now. Or at least, I think so. I’ll be in touch. Just tell your girlfriend to calm her telenovela tits, alright?_ ”

Even if Hana had tried to pass that remark off as a joke, Amélie’s voice turned icy, protective as she retracted her hand from Sombra’s face and moved it to her shoulder with a squeeze, despite knowing Hana wouldn’t be able to see it “Do **_not_** refer to her in that way. She has a name, please use it.”

“ _Y-Yes ma’am! My bad, jeez I fucked up, I don’t mean that in a bad way y’know. Sombra’s an asshole but she’s kinda cool—oh, hey eomma, what’s up?”_ And just like that, Hana hung up with the attention span of a magpie seeing something shiny, but the gist of the conversation had been communicated at least. The Frenchwoman silently locked the phone and handed it back to her Mexican housemate, who had been giving her a starry-eyed look for whatever reason. She left her to whatever suddenly gripping thoughts she was having, opting to reflect on the slim possibility that the Amaris were willing to help ward off Talon’s remnants from claiming their lives again.

Meanwhile, Sombra was mostly clinging desperately to the fact that Amélie didn’t refute Hana’s playful prod about them being girlfriends, hence the sudden daydream that made her eyes glaze over. Hope was still springing pretty dang eternal unless Mister Fister blocked that spring water up. She cleared her throat and asked “S-so, uh, how are you feeling?”

“Knowing that Akande has incapacitated our best chances of keeping away from him,” Amélie’s poise suddenly fractured into a hunch, as she ran her hands through her hair and seized fistfuls “Stressed is an understatement. Who knows what the Amaris will ultimately do?”

“H-Hey don’t be like that, I’ll figure something out! I _always_ figure something out.”

She didn’t hear Amélie’s response, so quiet and a murmur on the wind, but if she heard it would’ve taken the wind right out of her sails.

“I hope you do, for both our sakes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit of a short chapter but only because it was getting untenably long were I to leave the latter half in! There's still more to be done, but chapter 5 will go up relatively soon as well.


	5. Fish Outta Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCree reunites with Fareeha, who asks him to do her a favour and give Angela a ride home. He is harassed for his terrible fashion sense the entire time.

 “Who was that you were talking to?” Fareeha asked, tilting her head as she approached the coffee machine “I heard you screaming in Korean, and I even recognized some of those foul words you used. Everything okay? I mean, the conversation went from that to rather polite, so I’m kinda confused.”

“Oh, uh, long story eomma; I’ll tell you when your better half gets home from work--.”

And just like that, the doorbell rang in the Amari household nestled in Richman. Fareeha frowned; as much as she’d like that to be Angela herself, speak of the devil and all that, it was still way too early for her to have finished her shift down at the Unicorn. Hana knew that much as well, eyeing the front door with suspicion until they heard a voice call from the other side.

“Faree, open the dang door up! It’s just me, Jesse!”

Relieved, the Egyptian (well, if she was being specific she’d have to describe herself as Egyptian-German but American-raised, which was more effort than she felt like) chuckled to herself and opened the door, caffeine requirement all but forgotten. “Well, well, well, talk about unexpected guests! What got Jack to let you out of the shop?”

“I got them Australians to cover me, so I could get the jump on ya!” McCree roared with laughter and immediately swung his arm around Fareeha’s neck in a loose headlock, pulling her into the house and ruffling her hair with his other hand as she laughed along with him. Swiftly she wriggled out of the hold and dragged the arm he had used in the headlock behind him in a reversal, seizing the opportunity to whisk that dumbass cowboy hat off of his head and reveal the hat-hair tousled underneath.

She’d have more questions to ask about those two scruffy, explosives-obsessed Antipodean boys had she not already known her mother scared them to death in keeping them in line. “And you’re still wearing this ratty old thing? Jesus, you’re how old now?”

“I’m 5 years clear of you Faree, always have, always will be. Y’can still count, right?” he quipped, putting his hands on his hips. Only then did he notice the absolutely baffled Korean girl standing by and staring bewilderedly at the whole exchange. “Oh. Uh, I never got the introduction to this lil’ lady here—this is Hana isn’t it? Your mother’s real fond of her—calling her granddaughter in some language I ain’t heard her use before, like ‘sonyo’ or something.”

Hana wrinkled her nose. Close enough attempt at _sonnyeo_ for some homeless looking man from Texas, apparently.

“Yeah, this is Hana Song. Went from chance rescue in a Ltd gas station to live-in student, to host kid,” Fareeha said, almost looking indeed like a proud mother as she handed the hat back to Jesse. “To willing to going toe-to-toe with Gabe and his cronies—oh, uh.”

Despite Jesse’s own grimace, he shook his head and waved it off, pulling the hat back on his head “Nah, it’s fine. He changed big time, he reaped what he sowed, I guess.”

Looking towards the gamer, the pilot gestured to the man “This is Jesse McCree, this guy’s kinda like the big brother I never had.”

“You look like a deadbeat,” Hana bluntly stated, folding her arms.

“Okay, you’ve been with Satya way too long,” Fareeha grumbled. Her roommate promptly reacted with exaggerated horror. “Though if I’m honest, Satya would be even more disparaging.”

“What kinda snooty company y’keepin’?” Jesse asked with a hint of a chuckle to his voice, but just as much bafflement. “Don’t tell me that pretty lil gal you met is just as snobby!”

“Angela? N-No, no. You can see for yourself that she isn’t; mind doing me a favour and giving her a ride back here? Then we can all do that family reconnecting that we’ve missed out on.” Fareeha folded her arms, looking wistful for a moment “There’s a lot of catchup we need to do.”

He tipped his hat and shot the pair of them finger-guns and a wink. Fareeha chuckled over Hana’s dramatic eyeroll and huff.

* * *

Jesse wasn’t the kind of fella who’d lurk around the ‘gentleman’s club’; for one, it was too far away from where he lived normally, and he never felt right objectifying anyone, and especially not women. Ana Amari instilled a great deal of respect for the opposite sex in his mind, and he knew better than to fail her. He swaggered towards the door, eyeing the garish neon sign and, with his vision grabbed by some equally bright pink thing in the corner of his vision, glanced to see the bouncer imitating his pose with her thumbs tucked under her belt like she was channelling an old cowboy movie—or, uh, rather _he_ was seeing as she mimicked _him_.

He’d give her a piece of his mind, if he wasn’t dwarfed by her in terms of muscle and height. Luckily for him, she had a sense of humour.

“Ha! How can you expect me to take you seriously when you seem to have rolled out of the Vinewood Studio in costume?!” she barked jovially, throwing her head back in laughter “You are McCree then, yes?”

“How—how’d the heck d’ya know my dang name? Who the hell are you?!” he mumbled, wide-eyed and apprehensive.

“Not even the most demented of homeless people here would be caught _dead_ wearing that rubbish,” the woman chuckled, her giggling dying down. “Fareeha spoke to me often of your silly little habit, so there is only one person in San Andreas who would dare wear such things—that would be you! It is nice to meet you finally! I am Zarya—Aleksandra Zaryanova, but Zarya is what I go by. I am a friend of Fareeha Amari’s! What’s the visit for?”

“Oh, I popped round t’Faree and she asked me to pick Angela up. She workin’ the floor tonight?”

The big Russkie’s countenance changed rather drastically, her cheery disposition turning sombre and reflective “Oh, no. She cannot do it anymore, but it’s not my place to say why. Go in and chat; I would suggest a drink but Mei has asked me to not promote dangerous habits.”

He pat his pockets, but as he was doing that, Zarya dragged him in by the scruff of the neck and threw him inside “Do not worry friend! Consider it a favour!”

The change of surroundings was instant, and Jesse was lucky to have not ended up implanted into the wall where the door opened up facing towards. With reflexes honed over years of living with an adopted family of retired mercenaries as his parents, he caught himself well and dusted himself off remarkably smoothly, until the girl behind the desk immediately spurned his gentlemanly doff of his hat with such vitriol he almost limped to the bar. He was getting a better view of the area from there, was his reasoning for doing so, though before he could take his vantage point and try peer among the small crowd of punters for his sort-of-sister’s girlfriend, the celestial looking blonde drew his attention, wiping down the counter. That was probably her then, and not the spry looking girl on stage with a red cat mask swinging from the metal pole.

Seems like Angela had swapped stripper duties as Mercy for the quieter role behind the bar, cleaning off some shot glasses as Jesse took his seat on a bar stool in front of her, beside a giggly bespectacled woman who peered at him like she was getting ideas.

“Howdy Angie—you the one who stole my ol’ buddy Faree’s heart?”

She started, almost letting the glass slip between her cloth covered hand and the sudsy one holding it in place, until she pieced the evidence together into a recognisable identity “Oh! You… You’re Jesse McCree then! It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard plenty about you from Fareeha, but I didn’t think anyone dressed like that on this side of the Las Venturas desert.”

“Jeez, everyone’s cutting into me real deep! This the kinda welcome red carpet they roll out in Los Santos?” he huffed, taking off the hat that seemed to offend everyone’s senses in the big city “S’a pleasure to finally make yer company, Angela. I met that Hana girl too, and you’ll be pleased she ain’t that impressed with the hat neither.”

“I don’t think anyone is,” she offered, though the gentle look on her face took the edge of that supplementary ‘burn’. The woman beside him started with a gleeful smirk “I should get one of those—how do those signs go? Save a horse, ride a cowboy?”

“ ** _MEI!_** ” Angela squeaked, as Jesse’s face went as red as the flannel he happened to be wearing. The bartender collected herself to the best of her ability and shook her head disparagingly “I’d make an excuse that Zarya would not be happy, but their torrid arrangement is… flexible, or that she’s had too much, but Mei can comfortably drink me under the table. Me, a Swiss doctor! Please ignore her for now.”

Mei merely winked at McCree with more interest than he expected.

“She’s just—she’s just _insatiable_. That’s all I’m saying on the matter,” Angela continued, uttering ‘I know way too much about her adventures’ under the pulsating music.

Taking the hint, the scruffy Blaine County native pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the stage behind him “You hanging up the stilettos then? Can’t say this is as exciting as going t’town on the pole.”

“Yes, well, circumstances… changed that,” the blonde answered reluctantly, setting the glass into the tray and leaning against the counter grimly “Mercy’s been retired, did Fareeha not mention it? …Reyes injured me so horribly that I couldn’t really hope to return to the stage. The punters were devastated.” She smiled, a curious bitterness to her quip. “At least the manager got them to take heed of ‘Mercy’ meeting her career’s demise thanks to violence against women, and the regulars took it to heart. Some upswing I suppose.”

“I… yeah, I guess that’s a positive,” Jesse murmured, loosely folding his hands one atop the other as he sat forward “You recoverin’ alright?”

“I can still walk, so I thank my lucky stars for that much,” Angela replied, fetching him a glass “Would you like a drink? I’ll make it free. I think the Madame manager can live without a few dollars.”

“Nah hun, I’m drivin’ you back to your lil nest in Richman when y’finish. Water’ll do me fine,” he replied, a little brighter now that she was being rather kind to offer. “Wish I could carry that offer over for when I ain’t behind the wheel.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Angela answered, beaming as she filled him a glass. “Anyway, the Unicorn is fine without Mercy; the men mourned her moving on, but I think they like the look of the new blood.”

“Oh, the girl on stage now I’m assumin’? She your protégé or something?”

“That Panther girl’s probably the next Mercy in the making,” Mei chimed in, swirling the ice in her cocktail-filled glass with the straw perched in it “Lots of ‘who is that’ here n’ there. Angie did kind of take her under her wing and tell her the do’s n’ don’ts. I think Angie’s enjoying the big sis role, if you could call it that.”

“It’s nice. I like the mentoring aspect! Ann could probably pass for a younger sibling if we weren’t from different parts of the world,” Angela joked, folding her arms “I keep an eye on her, she’s a good kid, barely Hana’s age and I think in her university too. Anyway, far more importantly, what in the name of heaven convinced you to be as much as a Wild West reject as you dress?”

“Well, Fareeha toldja how I was brought up right?”

“Around Ana Amari, I can only guess,” Angela mumbled, eyes narrowing a little as she mentally replayed a memory of their very first encounter many years before she ever even met Fareeha. “You were adopted by Jack, yes?”

“Mhm, him and Gabriel. Though, given all the shit that’d happened, not much time really raisin’ me proper. Think the ol’ television accounted for most my upbringin’. I saw a llllllllllotta old ass Vinewood classics about the frontier, Native Americans, sheriffs and duels in the dusty streets, that kinda thing. Stuck with a lil impressionable boy like m’self.”

“Impressionable…” Mei repeated to herself, glancing over at McCree as she bit the tip of her pinkie finger with an impish grin. Jesse and Angela mutually elected to completely ignore her.

The blonde woman began to gather her rather Spartan amount of belongings together, watching the seconds count down on her shift time, glancing at her co-worker coming in for the transition of staffing “Unfortunate, but you seem to have turned out well, fashion atrocities notwithstanding.”

“C’mon, I’m here to give you a ride home and this is how y’treat me?” Jesse whinged, getting up off of the stool as he took her visual hint to get ready to head out.

“I think I’m probably the nicest person you’ve spoken to all day. I’m not a betting woman, but I fancy the odds on that with how this city simply is.”

He had little to counter that with, especially when that was the whole truth of the matter. With a grumble, he followed Angela outside, Mei bidding them both a fond farewell (though making a phoning gesture with her hand and mouthing ‘CALL ME’ at McCree).

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone noticed that cameo fully blame hoverbun for that.


	6. Real Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena gets a visit; the Amaris decide what to do about the Talon conundrum.

“You don’t mind coming along to this do you?” Sombra asked, nudging her French roommate gently with an elbow “I know she tried to get you to bail Talon before Gabriel brought you to that recycling plant.”

“She always believed in my innocence over Gérard’s death,” Amélie solemnly replied, her broad stride ponderous and slow as they approached the hospital that Tracer found herself in. Sombra struggled to keep up with her long legs. “Even when I didn’t believe in it myself. It is something that sticks with you, in a manner of speaking.”

Her former colleague blinked, seeming to understand the link between them a little more, though it made her stomach sink in her body “Ah, so you’re sweet on her huh? I guess she’s a cute lil bundle of attitude from England, some charm on top of that belief too right?”

Amélie scoffed at the notion, rolling her eyes as the automatic doors slid open to allow them into the building “No interest. I believe she has a significant other living in England, from what pedestrian conversation we had as they brought me to the prison. Why, are you trying to rile me or something?”

“Nah, ain’t like that amiga! Just wondering,” she answered, reassured and buoyed by that knowledge. Smiling to herself about this uplifting insight, Sombra hastened to the receptionist to get the location of their secret agent casualty, which a young nurse overheard.

“You guys want to see Oxton? I’ll take you to her; she’s on the way to where I need to go,” he offered, looking up at Amélie and Sombra with a big, friendly grin. The Frenchwoman idly noticed the sparkle to his blindingly white teeth “She’s been doing really well since her surgery; our inhouse specialist got her stable enough that she’s been as chatty as can be for someone with a shattered ribcage.”

“Whoa, so you guys fixed her up enough that she can talk when she’s conscious? What kinda miracle worker are you guys?” Sombra baulked, blinking in awe at the diminutive man leading her and Amélie to the ward that Lena ‘Tracer’ Oxton was lying in.

“Well, I didn’t do it, but big hotshot Vaswani did,” the young man offered, adjusting his dreadlocks under his surgical cap that struggled to contain them “She’s a prodigy, even if she’s got an attitude problem.”

“Don’t all prodigies get a huge attitude problem? Part n’ parcel of the whole thing, if y’ask me,” the hacker chuckled, which the fellow echoed.

“Until you bone it out of her as my buddy found out--.”

“ _What?_ ” Sombra laughed, amazed he’d straight up mention anything like that, to complete strangers no less. Amélie’s poker face could have won her a few million dollars at that moment.

“N-Never mind. Anyway, the hotshot needs me to assist her in the theatre, your girl’s down that way, last bed on the left by the window. Later!”

He scurried away, no doubt trying to avoid any annoyed confrontation with the aforementioned surgeon as well as stumble into more very blatant shares of far, far too much information. Sombra watched him for a second, before following his directions with an amused smile. For whatever reason, Amélie was smiling even wider—an exquisitely rare occurrence, so something was up.

“What’re you so happy about?”

“Did you not recognise him? That was DJ Lucio that you are so divided about.”

Her companion 180’d dramatically into outrage “Seriously!?! No fucking way!”

“Could you two pipe it down?” a quiet, English accented voice asked from the bed. The two women stood by the end, and looked with a wince at the host of IVs in her arms and rigid casts framing Lena’s tiny whippet waist. “Can’t have a blummin’ circus in here.”

“I imagine you can’t speak too much, or afford anything that would shake your damaged torso,” Amélie pointed out, folding her arms loosely as she took a seat beside Lena “I would also ask how you are, but clearly that would be a pointless question.”

“Yes well, I got ‘er to thank for that,” Lena retorted, gesturing towards Sombra whose shoulders sagged.

“Don’t rub it _in_. I thought you guys could take him. I didn’t count for him getting some buffs or whatever cheats he’s tapping into.” She paused, eyes suddenly widening when comprehension dawned on her “Oh, fuck me, it’s probably that Irish fuckhead injecting him with roids or whatever.”

“I’d say spill the beans, but right now I think I want to be in one piece before I start working again,” the MI7 agent feebly replied with a sheepish little smile “Pass it onto Winston when you’ve a minute. He was discharged a couple hours ago, a lot more fit for this here job than I am right now.”

“Lena, I’m sorry, I owe you even more for this fuck up,” Sombra mumbled, slumping into the chair opposite Amélie, head lowered “I’ll tell Winston about that Moira asshole, just, fuck I shoulda figured she’d have given him some bonuses! Why else would he turn up here alone looking for us?”

“Eh, apologies don’t work here, need action.” Her sentences were brief, something that visibly frustrated the incapacitated Englishwoman beyond belief when normally she was impossible to get to shut the fuck up “No talk of owing anyone either. You girls got an idea how to take ‘im?”

“Honestly? We’re kinda flailin’ in the dark,” Sombra conceded, sharing a worried look with Amélie, whose serene look betrayed the anxieties about their tenuous situation through a downturn of her lips. “All we’re hoping for is the Amari trump card actually declaring for us, even if--.”

“—even if I’ve given them so many reasons to never assist,” Amélie finished, a barely-perceptible quiver to her voice. Lena hummed, frowning.

“I could try advocate.”

Amélie answered the injured woman over Sombra’s growling about D.Va “I believe Ms Song is going to attempt that too.”

“Oh, they might listen to her! There’s hope yet you two.” The British agent offered a hopeful look “And if she needs it, I’ll help her out with that.”

* * *

“Glad you got here,” Fareeha greeted her mother and Reinhardt—well, her father, even though it was still strange to think of him thus—at the door as they huddled in. Hana beamed from ear to ear at the table with Angela, the former calling out a ‘hi halmeoni, halabeoji!’ along with the latter’s wave. The small kitchen table that they were sitting at were shortly dwarfed by the immense size of the old German as he ruffled Hana’s hair with a hearty laugh.

“What’s the urgency?” Ana asked as she took her seat, serious where Reinhardt was jolly, sensing something in the air. Hana and Reinhardt’s exchange was cut short, as the gamer looked sheepishly at a now equally stern Fareeha who remained standing, pacing about. Angela lightly folded her hands on the table with a forlorn sigh.

“I don’t suppose you know who Akande Ogundimu is?”

Fareeha was met with a blank stare.

“I guess he had no overlap with Merryweather then--.”

Now, Ana found her voice, her eye aglow with a fresh swell of worries and defensiveness “Don’t tell me some nonsense has resurfaced? Merryweather is as good as dead.”

“But Talon isn’t, it seems.” Fareeha glanced briefly at the oddly quiet Hana, anxiously fidgeting from where she sat, toying with that curious little cube she bought a week back. “Lena and Winston, those agents that took you to the recycling plant? They were injured trying to protect their new hire from the supposed ashes of Talon, Sombra. Seems there’s still plenty of Talon left on the East Coast in Liberty City.”

The very mention of the fateful place stung her mother and Reinhardt in a shared, painful memory that Fareeha was now very much aware about. Hana’s free hand rubbed the back of her neck, craning her head back and sighing more out of nerves rather than anything else.

“This guy, Akande, he’s looking for Sombra and Amélie. He put Lena in hospital and injured Winston, and all he wants is to take those women back to Talon—or kill them if they refuse. And from what Hana told me after she very impulsively called Sombra directly, they’re refusing because they like being civvies. I can’t exactly _blame_ them,” the pilot stated, folding her arms and clenching her jaw as she brushed by the surgical scars that pulled the bullet out of her lung. “Amélie has asked us for help, but expects none.”

Fareeha finally took her own seat, looking more so at Ana than anyone else “…so what do we do?”

“I’m glad she expects none,” her mother coldly answered, continuing to stare ahead, seemingly through Fareeha and into space as if thinking back to when the Frenchwoman robbed her of stereo vision. “Because she is getting none. She took my eye and almost took you too. She owes us tenfold, if anything. Let Talon business stay Talon; I see no reason to help.”

Hana looked at her bitter halmeoni despairingly, even though she knew that it’d be a slim-to-none chance of Ana wanting to help. Fareeha was mixed, stroking her chin in thought “I… don’t know if I could help either. I haven’t totally healed up physically, let alone mentally.”

Ana nodded approvingly. Reinhardt and Angela remained silent, a mutual muted agreement that they had nothing to say that would shake them from their loved ones’ decisions, as well as not really having the heart to argue for Sombra and Amélie’s plight either. Only one person at the table found it in her to dissent; Hana stood up and gripped her hands into fists “Wait!”

“Little hare, you will not convince me otherwise,” the old Egyptian mercenary quietly murmured, a hand outstretched towards her.

“Let me talk before y’put words in my mouth, okay? You guys may not want to help them, that’s cool and I get that,” Hana started, gesturing more so towards Ana rather than Fareeha “But if Lena and Winston thought Sombra was worth helping—they helped _us_ , so I think that makes those two worth helping too. I know Amélie isn’t a name either of you’d speak with any sorta fondness, and I fought her for **_you_** eomma! I did. But she doesn’t want to hurt anyone anymore; halmeoni you saw how she was! She was in pieces back at the plant, she killed and maimed because she was blackmailed for shit she didn’t even do! Do any of you know what that’s like? I sure as hell don’t. I can’t imagine how much regret’s weighing her down, and I don’t think she’s a lying sort either.”

“Nice speech,” Ana muttered, already standing from the table “But whatever she feels, that is her concern. If you wish to aid her, I won’t stop you. I can only say that you’re a more magnanimous soul than I could ever hope to be.”

She made for the door, as Reinhardt hastened to follow. But, before she opened and left, she looked firmly at Hana, the weight of her concern manifesting into a grim protectiveness “…sonnyeo, mark my words, if Amélie or that Sombra end up getting you killed in the process of you attempting to help them out, then I will save Akande the trouble. There will be **nothing** for him to find once I’m through with them. Am I clear?”

That question was more for Fareeha than Hana, given that the old woman stared harder at her as if to wordlessly tell her not to interfere in that quest should it come to pass. The answer she received from her daughter was a lowered head and a half-hearted shrug of acceptance. Ana nodded, and left along with Reinhardt.

Deflated, Hana plonked herself back down in her chair. Fareeha gruffly sighed and trudged back into her room, idly throwing things together for her next aerial job Downtown. Angela reached over solemnly and squeezed Hana’s shoulder gently—though she had no love lost for the beleaguered Lacroix, the altruistic spirit that Hana showed spoke to her, and that she would support.

“You’re very brave, tigerli.”

“Thanks eomma, I learned from the best,” Hana replied, looking at the door to Fareeha’s room wistfully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things gonna start getting mega real soon in this here fic


	7. Reunification

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akande visits the legendary Jack Morrison; McCree swears revenge

Jack whistled softly, an old tune that he’d usually stir into when feeling like waxing lyrical over the past—it was a tune that Gabriel taught him, one he’d always make fun of him for never quite getting and one Jesse would always complain that ‘ya sound like a dern piano outta tune pops!’ but… Jack always continued, always saw the song to the end; it’s what Gabriel would always insist on. He was cleaning up the shop that the Australians had kept surprisingly well despite their general scruffiness and messy habits (but still couldn’t exactly keep it in mint condition either, whether that was their presentation playing into it or just the nature of Blaine County would never be discerned), the blazing hot afternoon turning to a cosy evening heat as the sun descended.

The door to the shop swung open with a jingle, and the old soldier craned his neck around to see a tall, broad man standing almost eclipsing the front by himself. He blinked, shuffling behind the counter and setting down the dustpan and brush “Welcome to Morrison’s, how can I help you?”

“I wish to speak to Jack Morrison; I assume that is you?”

“Yes,” he answered, narrowing his eyes a little when he heard the unfamiliar accent and tone “Do I know you?”

“No, but you knew Gabriel.”

Jack stood in silence, before beckoning him around the back “Let me close up. I’m not going to talk about this while I’m running a store.”

The man waited patiently, even offering to help tidy up where it looked like a two-man job, not that the old American let him. Eventually the shop was shuttered up for the night, and he escorted the foreign fellow into the cosier part of the building where he would often take a moment to read a magazine, hanging around in case thieves tried anything funny in the immediate aftermath of the shop closing. Two armchairs and a dingy old TV plus a rug over the tatty wooden floor made up the space, and Jack sat himself down, gesturing to the other for the guest to sit in.

“Did you want to know something about him?”

“Truthfully, I worked with him,” the man began “I am Akande Ogundimu—I only ever heard of his Merryweather escapades and joined his Talon mission. I looked up to him a lot. He spoke often of you, and as such—it’s an honour to finally meet you, Mr Morrison.”

His senior sat back in the chair, laughing bitterly at the hand that was extended towards him “You get to meet me as a washed up miserable old fuck. Not much of an honour.”

“It still means very much to meet the man who took centre stage in his heart,” Akande insisted quietly, relaxing in the chair and letting the dismissal of his handshake offer fly over his head. The remark visibly affected an already dreary Jack. “I believe deep down… he always wanted to try and reach out to you, but feared his disfigurement would spurn you.”

“You know that was _my_ doing, right?”

“Lovers’ spats yield the worst scars.”

“Yeah. I wear his right round my gut. Even then, I guess… I guess that North Yankton fight was the last time I got to really talk to him as Gabe—surely you’ve got better things to do than listen to this has-been? You’re here on a mission, I can see it in your eyes; if anything my experience as a merc taught me, it’s spotting that kind of hunger.”

“You would be correct.”

“…here to kill some deserters?” Jack growled, leaning forward with a steely look in his worn grey-blue eyes “You’re a chip off the Reyes block in that regard.”

“He taught me well to clean up loose ends, so I must,” Akande answered grimly, his jaw set and his fingers curling on his lap, slowly beginning to stand up as he pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Jack’s face. His face was racked with a genuine guilt that the man himself had never felt on this level before, never wanting to visit any sort of violence on Gabriel’s family especially posthumously “You must forgive me; I cannot let anyone know I was here and on such a task, no less.”

He swallowed thickly, expecting the legendary Jack Morrison to spring up and wrestle the gun out of his hands, bring him to the ground and press the barrel to the back of his head. What he wasn’t expecting was the old soldier to smile sadly up at him, unmoving from his seated position.

“Wh… What?”

“It’s fine. It’s never been the same since North Yankton; I haven’t been the same since Gabe took his own life. I’ve made my peace, I’m not afraid to go—I welcome it.”

Akande stood still for a moment, wrestling with his words internally, overwhelmed by Morrison’s deathseeking.

“D…do you have any last wishes? I will respect them until my own dying day.”

“Whatever business you’re tidying, that’s Talon only, I’m assuming. In any case, just… just spare Jesse, please. The boy’s a man grown now but he’s still lacking sense, and without me it’s gonna be hard for him as it is. I… I know it’s selfish to up and leave but it’s been a long time coming.”

“Granted. I will spare Jesse McCree—I was planning to nonetheless, since he is Gabriel’s son as much as yours too.”

The main concerns were laid to rest then; Jack figured he wouldn’t need to make a point about the Amaris, this sounded like it wouldn’t affect them. His worn face pulled into a sad smile, sitting back in his chair and wearily sighing “I’ll say hi to Gabriel for you. Thanks, Akande.”

“Forgive me.”

The sound of a gunshot wasn’t something that went unheard in Blaine County, least of all in Sandy Shores, but there was something about the calibre of the weapon, it wasn’t the stock in Ammunation. It was enough to draw the attention of the eager-eared and gifted of hearing among the backward hicks (as Ana Amari once called them), sensing something was off, but not enough to overcome their own fear of the inimitable Jack Morrison to dare approach. That was left for Jesse McCree, after a long drive back home from the city and catching up with the patchwork ‘family’ of sorts in the shadow of Los Santos skyscrapers.

He pulled his banged up Rhapsody into the pitiful excuse for a parking lot ahead of the store, and got out, spotting the shutters and shrugging, figuring his pops merely closed early due to quiet hours.

And so, he plodded around the back end, whistling over the crunch of sandy tarmac under his boots, paying little heed to the one car that was present. He stopped, only because the man he had met in the Morningwood Cemetery stepped out of the back door. Why was he here? …McCree couldn’t quite recall the name, but it was odd that he was here—

“Pa!”

Jesse’s eyes widened, and he threw himself into the humble back area, only to be greeted with the thick metallic stench and the sight of red spattered all over Jack’s favourite chair.

“ ** _PA!!_** ”

The macabre scene was juxtaposed with the eerily serene expression the lifeless old soldier had—or at least what Jesse could bear to look at past the mangled skull from a well-placed bullet. The would-be cowboy sobbed messily, already nearing hysteria as he wailed for his pa, even if the man was a poor distant excuse for a father most of the time. His head felt like it was swimming, his knees no more than jelly and barely able to hoist his weight, but one alarmingly clear question rang out repeatedly: Who **_did_** this?

It was presumptuous, but it was the only line he had and he needed to get out of that bloodbath. Jesse hurtled through the door anew and tackled the ambling Akande to the ground with a howl that spoke of heartbreak and raw familial fury, balling his hands in fistfuls of the man’s shirt and forcing him to look the wild-eyed McCree in the face.

“You killed my pa, you sonnovabitch! You **_murdered_** him!”

His unbridled emotion was met with what he could only perceive to be cold indifference, and he pulled Akande towards him once before slamming him into the ground “Answer me!”

The blow would’ve been enough to significantly impair someone’s thinking, perhaps even permanent brain damage, but Akande merely stared at him as if he was lightly bapped on the nose with a newspaper “His death he went readily to. It sounded as if he wanted to, and I was the perfect opportunity to avail of.”

“The fuck do you know!?” McCree roared, but his interrogation was unexpectedly ended when his captive showed he was simply letting McCree hold him down, revealing his strength with a colossal heave and throwing the younger man bodily off of him. Jesse tumbled for a moment in the dust, kicking up a cloud in his haste to get to his feet and launch himself back onto Akande, but only found a firm grip around his neck. His vision was clouded and hemmed in by black with every second, until the sight of the grim-faced mercenary faded.

* * *

 

It felt like an age until he found himself conscious again, in a hospital ward no less, and an angelic woman over him—

“The… the hell? Where am I?”

“Pillbox Hill Medical Centre,” the woman answered, richly Teutonic in accent. That meant—

“Whoa, what? Angie?”

“Yes, but it’s Dr Ziegler when you’re in my workspace,” she replied, trying to affect a jovial tone “Try not to talk too much for now. Those Australians who Ana befriended-- they found you blacked out; they called Fareeha and she… panicked for lack of a better term. She drove you to the airstrip and flew you all the way onto the roof of this hospital.”

“Faree got me outta dodge huh?” he mumbled, settling back into the pillows and coughing a little, feeling the hoarse edge around his vocal chords when two hands had closed around them “Did she see Akande?”

“Who?”

“She’ll know,” he muttered enigmatically, deflating as the events of the last day caught up to him. “About my pa—.”

Angela’s tone was clipped and brief as she scribbled her notes. Jesse figured it was because of what she said next “Ana and Reinhardt are organising his funeral. He’ll be buried with Reyes.”

He found it hard to judge her negative bias, especially when Gabriel was responsible for killing her Unicorn alter-ego essentially. McCree said nothing, but let the information wash over him. Even though he hadn’t asked, she felt it was necessary she answer.

“You’ll be fit to attend. Fareeha will fetch you early to buy something formal.”

The injured party shrugged feebly, drained. Angela looked over at him, shook her head with a sigh and squeezed his shoulder with a warm, comforting look “I’m sorry about everything. Know that you have plenty of people to confide in who will support you.”

“Thanks.”

There was a long, pregnant silence between them as Angela finished checking the equipment dotted around him, disengaging any that she felt were unnecessary. She caught something that she felt Jesse hadn’t actually intended for her to hear, as quiet as it was, but she couldn’t stop herself from focusing on it.

“Least we got that dead parents thing in common now, huh.”

The sinking in her stomach was tantamount to that of an ocean liner dropping to the seabed in the Pacific, kicking up memories unwarranted, unwanted of her poor unfortunate parents and that redheaded woman. The Swiss woman coughed suddenly, apologising in a cluster of mumbling as she hurried away to try and reassert focus and control away from the most horrifying moments of her life.

Jesse was left wondering; what would the old Merryweather guard do about this? What was Fareeha’s plan? Where the hell would he start to find that Akande bastard and make good on his revenge?! One thing at a time, sadly. He needed to focus on putting his oft maligned and downtrodden father to rest first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> given the holidays are coming up i want to a) apologise for this chapter and b) apologise bc the next chapter will probably be another couple of weeks away


	8. Situation Evaluation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amélie and Sombra take stock of events thus far; Moira and Akande do the same elsewhere

Amélie stared at the packet covered in French, knowing that trying to get this through US Customs was a battle many just couldn’t bring themselves to face over one single set of cigarettes, thus her mind raced—who could’ve done this? Her confusion is enough to keep her from opening it up and indulging immediately in a stick of tobacco, turning the box over and scanning the familiar mother tongue inscribed on it. The front door closed, and she jumped, but it was merely Sombra returning home, and once her Mexican roommate looked at her with a huge toothy grin, she put two and two together.

“Did… did you get this for me?”

“Honestly I’d rather ya not smoke at all but, y’started out of stress right?” she asked, hauling herself onto the counter and kicking her legs “With taking shots for Talon that’d get me puffin’ the cancer sticks too. I feel ya.”

Amélie wearily regarded her as soon as she uttered the words ‘cancer sticks’. Sombra merely offered a half-assed shrug in response.

“Sorry that’s not exactly a glamourous term to use, but I’d rather you quit so you can live longer.”

“We’re both on borrowed time,” the sniper retorted, opening the pack and pulling out a cigarette with her teeth in a languid and rather sensuous (if unintentionally so) manner. Sombra had to look away, or risk her blush be noticed the more she stared at the Frenchwoman’s mouth.

“H-hey, I’m coming up with a plan! I just want to make sure it’s watertight before I tell you, that’s all.”

“Stalling then,” Amélie muttered, but not in a particularly disparaging tone, lighting up and puffing away “How do you propose we outwit Akande Ogundimu? He was always a brilliant strategist for Gabriel whenever we took jobs out of the North American continent. Always a trick up his sleeve, always another way around what seemed to be a dead end.”

“Well there’s two variables here, Gabe’s dead as fuck, _aaaand_ Akande seems to be going it mostly alone. I don’t see any Talon guys in Los Santos, so either he’s having trouble keeping the whole thing together or--.”

“—or he’s so confident he doesn’t see the point in bringing anyone with him from Liberty City to here,” her colleague offered, eyes straying off into a corner as she frowned, pondering both possible reasons and what their old teammates would think of them now. “Perhaps he’s still using what ties are left to the Vagos gang, but given they were very quick and ready to throw themselves behind Reyes’ cause, I can’t see them being terribly helpful towards him.”

“Yeah, if there was one thing old Reaps was good at, it was unifying them behind a guy they saw as one of their own kinda dudes. They didn’t listen to me unless I channelled their mothers,” Sombra chuckled with a shake of her head, her legs stilled and her posture a little deflated “No knowing if that’ll work again if they’re pointing guns at us.”

The hacker paused, deep in thought. It was enough to coax Amélie into looking curiously over at her; usually for Sombra to be quiet and to be thinking so visibly hard usually meant there was something of significant gravity and pertinence about to be said. Usually. Rarely did she wear this face and talk about something inane from Fame Or Shame, or whatever in gods name Solomon Richards released now in cinemas.

“…I have a real strong hunch that it might be somewhere in the middle—that is, Akande’s not bringing anyone from Liberty because yeah, of course he thinks he doesn’t need that much to grab both of us. But also, if he was able to use the Vagos, wouldn’t he have gotten us by now? His position’s kinda rocky, and judging from the news I caught outta Tracer, we might just have a hope of getting some allies out of the Amari fam.”

“News?” the sniper repeated, feeling a little cold inside when that surname was mentioned hand in hand with potentially game-changing information; she always feared the worst when such things combined “What news?”

“Jack Morrison was found murdered. Bullet in the head, simple execution and the only sorta witness was his adopted son Jesse McCree.” Her Mexican friend helpfully gestured a gun being fired against her skull, but continued gesticulating wildly so Amélie didn’t have to dwell on the sudden memory of Gabriel blowing his head apart “Y’know, the same kid that Jack and Gabe raised back in the day? Tracer heard on the grapevine that Jesse saw Akande do it. So, shitty as it sounds, we might have a hope of getting one of the remaining Merryweather veterans and their kids to help out.”

“That… indeed doesn’t sound like the Akande we know. Was there any reason?”

Sombra folded her arms, sliding off her seat and ambling around the compact little interior that they called home, bare feet papping against the floor “I can only assume it’s to do with his Gabriel Reyes hero worship steering him to Jack, but killing him? Panic maybe? He revered Reyes so, Morrison being given that same treatment makes sense.”

“…It doesn’t add up. He’s the first to avoid collateral damage, that’s his one commandment he always insisted we follow. It was enough to affect Reyes when we… we came out here to look for the old Merryweather guard, he insisted on us avoiding harming civilians as much as possible.”

“Yeah, well, he walked that back when you shot Fareeha, since that kinda got him face to face with his old crew like he wanted.”

Amélie recoiled, seeming to hiss her intake of tobacco when reminded. Sombra blinked and rubbed the back of her neck anxiously “Sorry, I shoulda phrased that a lil bit more delicately. In any case, Akande’s a little disorganised for a change and running a little haphazardly; let’s turn that to our advantage huh?”

“…what are you suggesting?”

Sombra’s expression grew ambitiously devious. It was a rare sight, but it inspired a special kind of dread in most Talon members back in the day; it meant she had a very interesting and risky plan that she was adamant about executing “If it was a one-man trip, let’s hit up Liberty and wreck the files they got on us, on the Amaris, on everyone even remotely tied to the mess from three months ago. Akande won’t be looking, and I doubt Talon got the memo on making sure we’re put down. So we’ll be even more ready for him and he’ll be extra clueless and lost in San Andreas.”

“We’re not going to be able to just walk into the headquarters after vanishing,” Amélie brusquely retorted, extinguishing her cigarette once she reached the filter “You can’t honestly think that’d work.”

“That’s why I’m gonna try get Lena to help me out with talking to the Amari fam!” Sombra threw her hands upwards, a little exasperated with the doom and gloom from her French roommate “Hana was sympathetic anyway, so we got a foot in the door there.”

“I really hope you’re right,” the sniper whispered, rubbing her temples steadily.

* * *

“So you killed him?”

“Yes,” Akande abruptly answered, eyeing the redhead circling him, investigating his body for any contusions from his run-in with Jesse McCree.

“He’s back together with our Reyes again at least,” the spindly woman sighed sadly with a shake of her head, tilting her superior’s head in the process and investigating a tiny bruise on his cheek “You panicked then?”

“Perhaps.”

“Ah, even toughened aul lads like yourself get spooked when legendary soldiers are in your midst,” she chuckled, patting his shoulder in a manner that he could only discern as vaguely mocking.

“Enough, O’Deorain.”

“Where’d the boy end up?” she asked, idly drifting to her table of medical supplies and ethically-suspicious scientific sundries. “You said some Australians turned up, and then the young Amari--.”

“Fareeha Amari took him to hospital in the city, as far away from me as possible.”

“And from the site of his dead father no less.”

“ _If you would let me_ **speak** _, Moira_.”

The geneticist merely smirked a vulpine grin that seemed to split her face a little bit more than comfortably human, nodding as if to let the gruff muscular mercenary to continue with his explanation.

“Then speak, unless you’re having more fun growling and glowering like I’m the bloody source of your misery! I’m not, as we both know, considering you could be still lying in Sandy Shores with grey matter spattered all over the red sand wastes.”

The defacto head of Talon stared up at his companion, who deflected his wrathful glare with shocking ease, her smile the very thing that could riposte away the sight that the subordinates of their PMC could never bear to witness.

“Seeing as you’re just content to gaze away, I’ll continue on with my end of this conversation and hope you’re more responsive than the brick wall you’re imitating right now. Tell me, isn’t this Fareeha Amari close to my dear little Swiss angel?”

“Where did you hear about this?” Akande let out a pained sigh, shoulders sagging in the manner of a tired parent trying to curb the overt enthusiasm of a child “Don’t obstruct our objective here with these flights of fancy you’re trying to pursue.”

“I’ll have ya know that this is information Sombra fed to us while she was still trying to scout out Fareeha to get a lead on Ana. Remember when she planted a bug on Fareeha’s phone?” Moira purred as she opened her laptop and began setting up her little portable lab to analyse ‘field data’ from her superior sitting gloomily nearby. “She mentioned a blonde woman, and given post-Fareeha shooting and Reyes losing his fucking mind over Angela Ziegler, it’s hard to stop myself putting things together. She’s relevant to Reyes, whether you like it or not, and she’s not exactly far removed from our mission. You injured Jesse, she presumably patched him up if Fareeha personally shepherded him to the city.”

Akande said nothing for a while, merely staring a hole through the infuriatingly smug snake looming above him with an empty syringe.

“Just… take your sample and tell me how your little augments performed. If your help is fruitless, I am sending you back to Liberty without a second thought.”

The Irish woman tried to affect a genuinely pleased look. She simply appeared more sinister in the process; the look troubled Akande. “And if my help is as bountiful as I’m ever so sure it is?”

The Talon head felt no pain from the needle entering his beefy arm, reacting only because of how much he abhorred dealing with this woman “…then you may stay. Just don’t let your little pursuit eclipse our mission, whatever the ungodly hell you want to do.”

“What’s with that tone? Oh _pet_ , I don’t intend to lay a single finger on _Angie_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer i like moira and she's cool in the game but  
> in this here fic y'all gonna h-a-t-e her
> 
> apologies for taking eons to post this, between sickness, holidays and more goddamn sickness im getting my shit pushed in hard weh


	9. Plans in Motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCree pursues Akande, Sombra recruits Hana and Fareeha-- Angela receives a call from someone she wished never spoke to her again.

A few boats idled in the La Puerta docks, bathed in the afternoon sun, their owners either lazing in their Rockford homes in the hills, or toiling in the upper echelons of Downtown’s high-rise offices. Akande patrolled the length of the docks in silence, keeping a wary eye out for the griffin-adorned boat that Reyes’ old German friend called his, while remaining hopeful he’d pick up some trail on the two AWOL Talon women. So far, _not_ so good; without Sombra’s intelligence he had to do things manually and if the mercenary was being honest with himself, he had become terribly complacent in relying on her ability for reconnaissance.

He sat down on a nearby bench with a huff, frustrated at his lack of foresight in bettering himself so he had no reason to lean on others. The only ‘ally’ he had in this city, and he’d use that term very loosely given her warped predilections, was Moira O’Deorain. An Irish geneticist sitting on a lot of medical degrees, but a fucked-up personality meant she wasn’t exactly fit for practice; when Reyes came back with his horrifically scarred face roaring about Angela Ziegler ruining him, her peculiar form of loyalty to him drove her to do something _unspeakable_ to that girl. He never knew the details, but Akande couldn’t say he particularly wanted to. Reyes had allowed Moira to stay for that intense, if distorted, loyalty, and Akande’s own excessive dedication to the man meant he too was reluctant to dispense with her, even if she made his stomach _turn_. The woman had her uses, much as he hated to admit it. Even if he’d have to work on his ability to track people, she would at least allow him to exceed normal human boundaries of endurance in order to find Amélie and Sombra as soon as possible.

As Akande became introspective, he was dully aware of someone sitting down beside him, but too focused on reflection to identify who. The fist in his face barely seconds later gave him pause to guess that it was probably that cowboy again.

“Fancy seeing _you_ here, y’sonnovabitch!”

_Yep, Jesse McCree._

Akande turned his head to look at Jesse, finding his head abruptly looking the opposite way when he punched him again.

* * *

This was echoed elsewhere in Los Santos, as Hana Song retracted her fist from Sombra’s face, shaking it out. The hacker cradled her face in one hand as the other flew out to stop Amélie starting forward, as Fareeha exclaimed her housemate’s name in aghast shock “H-Hana! What the hell are you doing!?”

Muffled, slightly blocked up, but quick to interrupt, Sombra intervened with a fervent wave “No look—look it’s okay she’s fine—it’s okay, I deserved that.”

Hana huffed through her nostrils like a bull, posturing about before a grievous charge, fingers still curling in and outward after the impact with the Mexican’s face. She didn’t notice too much, but Amélie did flinch, recalling the brutal flurry of punches merely months ago at Hana’s hands “Yeah, damn fucking right. That’s for trolling my goddamn channel and giving my homeboy Lúcio grief, _and_ putting Tracer in the ICU.”

“I get it—I get it, aight,” Sombra mumbled, furrowing her brow as she studiously checked her nose for bleeding—thankfully there was none. “Now will y’hear us out?”

Fareeha looked at Hana, a little afraid of the response. The shock on her face could have registered on the Richter scale upon watching the e-sports pro light up and offer a glowing affirmative.

“Yup, that’s outta my system. You want us to help you with your Talon problem, right?”

For the first time in many years, Fareeha and Amélie exchanged a look of shared bewilderment and eventually giving up on trying to search for sense in Hana and Sombra’s respective attitudes. Just as swiftly as they did, the pilot’s look hardened and the former mercenary glanced anxiously away, remembering what had happened the last time they had directly interacted. Almost immediately, Fareeha spluttered when Hana’s elbow hit her smartly in the solar plexus, squinting accusatorily at her in silence as the gamer glared at her “C’mon, you said you’d help me out here with this!”

“I… yeah, I did. Sorry, Lacroix.”

The owner of that name merely shook her head, murmuring quietly about how regarding her with that disdain was also quite natural to do, and she should really be used to it by now, wilting behind her equally purple colleague and roommate. Hana loudly cleared her throat “Okay! So, what’s the plan, genius?”

“Can you come with us?” Sombra asked, hopeful.

“ ** _Where?_** ” Fareeha sternly responded, her brows furrowed deeply.

“To Liberty City—we’re gonna break into Talon and I’m gonna wipe the databases clean of any shit they got on us, and also whoever’s left tied to Merryweather even tangentially; that includes you, doc Ziegler too and a couple others. Seeing as I’m the one who made those entries, consider this our apology.”

“You want us to help you break into the headquarters of a private military company?” Fareeha condensed the plan, with one brow now soaring up her forehead in disbelief at Sombra’s audaciousness “How exactly are we supposed to do that and get out _alive_?”

Expecting the former Talon hacker to back down, she was unpleasantly surprised anew when instead the woman beamed and punched her palm “That’s the neat part—see you’re gonna take the back seat, we’re not gonna put you in the direct line of danger. We—ah—we’ve done that enough.”

Amid the boisterous, self-assured confidence, the crack in Sombra’s face revealed genuine guilt that was mirrored by her looming French friend. It convinced the pilot finally, and she nudged Hana, indicating with a nod that she was game for whatever this could be.

* * *

Nonchalantly, Akande grabbed Jesse’s fists, punched him in the jaw and then using that distraction the mercenary seized his shoulder, and bodily flung him in the direction the man kept punching his face towards. Landing hard enough to bounce, the younger man gasped, winded horribly, scrabbling at the pavement below him as he fought to breathe. Akande grumbled as if the 10-minute fight was an inconvenience rather than any form of threat, walking and swivelling his arms in their socket alternatingly “You must really stop this, young McCree. I do not wish to hurt you, but you’re giving me precious little choice to incapacitate you. Neither of us can do this forever.”

“Y-y’wanna try me?!” Jesse panted, squirming as he tried to move onto his front to push himself to his feet “I—I’m gonna—I’m gonna keep goin’! Goin’ til yer **dead!** ”

The sigh he saw the imposing man sag with was almost paternal in its palpable disappointment, as if McCree was no more than a petulant child. The patronisation was beyond infuriating, and he tried to struggle all the more in response. This was ceased swiftly when Akande delivered a swift kick to his temple, calculated to knock him out successfully.

“You are making my promise to your adoptive fathers very difficult to keep,” he muttered, ambling away from his handiwork. Just as he got back to street level from La Puerta Docks, he heard a keen screech. Akande chanced a look, to see a chubby looking woman running as fast as she could to the prone form of McCree. He stopped for a moment, witnessing her companion—a far broader, mightier woman—rush to her side also, then hastened away before they could spot him.

“M-McCree! Oh god, is he okay!?”

Zarya lumbered to the opposite side of the unconscious man, calmly checking the injuries incurred “He’s fine. We just need to take him somewhere where he can recover.”

“Let’s bring him back to the apartment--!”

“Way ahead of you,” the musclebound Russian answered, already scooping up McCree into her arms. Mei watched for a moment, staring at the comical size difference between her partner and her new crush, before shaking her head to regain focus, calling Fareeha to let her know what had transpired.

“You’re going to Liberty for a day? That’s a hell of a trek—oh, it’s important? Okay then, we’ll look after Jesse til you’re back.”

Zarya carefully put the man in the back seat, buckling him in and ensuring he wouldn’t be jostled too violently as they drove. Mei sat in the shotgun passenger seat, huffing at the light teasing over the line “Zarya knows I think he’s handsome—she doesn’t care, doesn’t Angie tell you _anything_?”

“ _She told me enough! Not even a bodybuilder Russkie is enough to keep you sated, you have to go for a cowboy reject on top of that!_ ” the Egyptian laughed on the other end “ _Anyway, I gotta go, I’ve let Angela know that just for today I won’t be picking her up til tomorrow_.”

“Later…! Smartass.”

* * *

Angela paced around the break room anxiously. It wasn’t an issue for Fareeha to go out of town for a night; she’d probably have put up more resistance had she not heard Hana’s overtures on how it’d be good karma to help out Sombra and Amélie. Driving home wasn’t a problem either—sure it sucked but it just made the ensuing sleep when her head hit the pillow that much better. What _was_ an issue, was the ominous string of messages sent to her phone from a number she didn’t recognise. She had responded for them to stop or she’ll get a legal team involved, but one more message saying that the person would call her to clear this all up filled her with a curious dread.

Satya had noticed, as did Lúcio, checking in on her later in the day. Lúcio was admittedly more hands off, given he was more used to dealing with the surgeon rather than Angela herself.

“Are you sure you’re feeling alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she stated, carefully taking hold of the Swiss doctor’s shoulder.

“Just… on edge. I’m going to head home early, I got Dr Hiraga to cover me a little earlier than usual,” Angela replied wearily, weaving a hand through golden hair “Before you tut at me, he offered.”

“That man is too kind,” Satya muttered, to which her friend nodded in agreement. She hummed “If that’s the case, I suppose I can’t be too mad. If you’re off now, then I’ll go check on you when I finish. That’ll be in an hour’s time or so, I think.”

“Yeah… yeah, that’d be generous of you,” Angela mumbled, shuffling towards the door “I’ll text when I’m home.”

Satya replied over her shoulder with an answer of ‘Cool!’ before the sliding doors separated the two. Angela sighed and looked up into the magnificent dusk skyline stretching out over the horizon, ambling towards her little silver Panda car that served her faithfully for years. She sat in, and her phone immediately rang.

It was the unrecognisable number that she now assigned ‘ominous’ to as an adjective. She plucked up her phone and answered, realising very quickly that the decision to refer to the number as ominous was a very, very good choice when the last person she ever wanted to hear from on this God-given planet purred into her ear.

“ _Hello Angela_.”

Worse than Lacroix, worse than Reyes, it was Moira O’Deorain. She inhaled sharply, with only a fearful little noise at the back of her throat serving as an answer. Her heart rattled uncontrollably in her chest, panic seeping into her bones.

“ _Hmm, yes, yes it’s me; I know it’s been forever. I’m in town, Angela! We should catch up_.”

Finally, the doctor found her voice; edged with hysteria, she shrieked “Never! How dare you—don’t come near me you fucking **monster**!”

“ _Now, now my dear_.” Every word, saccharine sweetness layered over rotten, poisoned talk. “ _Don’t be like that. It’ll be nice to see what you’ve been up to._ ”

Angela’s feeble Panda revved up, and she dropped the call as the nerves overcame her. All she heard was “ _Is this how you treat people who do you favours?_ ”

Flooring the pedal far heavier than she would normally, the tiny car shot out of the hospital car park northbound. All the anxiety-riddled Swiss woman could think of was getting home as soon as humanely possible, to lock herself up in her room and cry out the horrid sinking in her gut and the uncontrollable quiver to her limbs, in some bid to get back to normal before the next day in work. Part of her was glad Fareeha couldn’t see her like this; the source was a conversation she wasn’t yet ready to have.

It was probably not a great idea to be driving when she was so in her head like that, something that only occurred to her when the car suddenly slowed down with the weight of a human smacking hard onto the bonnet. The sensation and the noise of it all jolted her out of her grim reverie, and Angela almost fell out of the car rushing to the side of the motionless man on the tarmac.

“Oh dear god, what have I done!?” She turned him over, seeing Vagos colours and a vacant expression confirming her fear, but on further inspection… his body temperature had cooled significantly, and there was a sloppy bandage underneath his tanktop with blackened dried blood on it. If anything, this man was already dead, and was thrown at her car, but why?

Just as she stood in a bid to call for the police, she felt two sets of strong hands on her body—one seizing her arms and another forcing a cloth over her mouth and nose. The strong smell confirmed to her at least by scent that it was chloroform; before her mind could finish actually registering the substance she had already blacked out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those guessing what Moira did, hold on til the next chapter and don't jump the gun bc it's not actually as straightforward an implication as you think.


	10. Reliving the Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCree evokes Reyes' spirit; Moira's delights are cut short.

The chill sensation of fresh ice applied to his dozen bruises roused McCree from his unconscious state, contrasting with the warmth his head lay over. After a few seconds of readjusting to daylight and his surroundings, Jesse realised the cushy pillow he was draped over was Zhou Meiling’s thighs with his eyes flying wide open.

“Wh-What in **_tarnation_**!?”

“Oh! You’re awake—take it easy, you got a really bad beating at the docks,” Mei pleaded, coaxing him back down, hoping that her fingers weaving through his hair would help ease him. He grumbled, but it was plain as day how he welcomed the intimate situation he suddenly was in, something nearby Zarya noted with a loud guffaw.

“See how eagerly he rests on you _dorogoi_! Maybe there’s mutual interest yet. We need to make sure he stops running towards an early demise however.”

“O’ _course_ Zarya’s here,” Jesse scowled, folding his arms like a petulant child. The expression was so mismatched to this burly, 37-year-old man, that the climatologist who had him resting on her started giggling quietly to herself. “I ain’t gonna _die_ , Zar, I got a survival instinct.”

“Then stop picking fights with a known mercenary,” Zarya emphasised, clattering around the kitchen; McCree could only surmise that she was preparing some lunch. “Before you ask, Fareeha told me.”

“Figured Faree’d spill the beans,” he muttered, slowly sitting himself up with Mei fussing over him “Look, I have a damn good reason, and neither you nor Faree’s gonna stop me tryin’.”

Jesse looked over, hearing a little frustrated noise out of the woman he had hitherto been lying dazed on, like she wanted to dissuade him and tell him it’s not worth it, but something was holding her back. Probably somethin’ along the lines o’ how it ain’t worth putting his life on the line, but she seemed like she had a charmed life. He then realised she was smiling at him broadly enough that small dimples bookended that cute smirk. Was he staring, and she misinterpreted—oh forget it.

“You’re so cute when you’re caught out!”

Before he could even say ‘don’t get ideas’, Zarya chuckled as she set her colossal, calorific meal out ahead of her “My friend, Mei is getting ideas by the myriad. There is no stopping her.”

“Darn it,” he mumbled, patting around himself and his head realising that his beloved cowboy hat was nowhere to be found “M’hat! Where’d it go?”

“Threw it out,” Mei answered, stone-cold expression. Jesse’s face turned comically from outrage into actual heartfelt dismay, and the second he hung his head, she sighed and pulled it from a hidden spot beneath a few pillows “I’m kidding. It’s here. I wouldn’t get rid of it especially because you’re so attached to it.”

“Phew! I was worried for a sec,” he quipped, gratefully reaching for the hat “Thank ya darlin’.”

“ _Darling?_ How sweet!” She held it just out of reach long enough to tap the tip of his nose, giggling as she sat the hat on his head carefully, adding a jaunty angle to it. Mei was rewarded with a rather bashful blush and a smile, and endeared, she stood up “It’d be wrong of me to take that signature style from you!”

“W-well I sure appreciate it.”

* * *

Half the city away in the Elysian docks, Angela stirred slowly. Her neck and upper back ached the way it would were she to be asleep sitting up, but she’d have faceplanted if not for the—ah, there were ties binding her to the uncomfortable wooden chair. The room was darkened, but it didn’t look like a proper room, more like the inside of a warehouse, cordoned off with some plywood walls so it wasn’t as empty as it could’ve been.

“Awake yet, Angela?”

She bolted upright, wincing and gasping when a rod of pain shot through her shoulders and neck. Through a squinting eye (the other firmly tightened shut), she looked out for the tell-tale beanpole of an Irish woman in a cold sweat.

“Ah, looks like you’re up and at ‘em.” This was joined by a shock of halogen white lights flaring into life and momentarily blinding the doctor “Whoops, they’re very intense, aren’t they? No matter, all the better to see you with. It reminds me of that little test I put you through.”

Angela froze, distilled terror pumping through her veins as her blood went cold and still at the sight of Moira O’Deorain looming out of the darkness remaining a few metres away, dressed as impeccably as those many years ago in her business casual suit shirt and finely pressed trousers. The older woman smiled a serpentine look, not unlike that of a reptile about to inhale its trapped, weakened prey; it’s a look Angela recognised from that day she’d rather forget even happened, if she ever could.

“You know the one,” Moira purred, pacing around the chair and then placing her hands slowly on the terrified, quivering Swiss woman’s shoulders, uncomfortably long fingers squeezing with way too much familiarity “The one that guaranteed your license to practice, hmm?”

“Stop, don’t **_touch_** me, you sick **_freak_**!” Angela shrieked, squirming furiously from where she was tightly bound “Don’t act like you did me any favours when you coerced me into getting blood all over my hands!”

“What? Is that why you won’t play nice with me?” Moira replied, now in front of her and visibly taken aback to the point where she was enjoying the theatre of it all, shortly breaking into a more venomous grin “You should be _grateful_. Not only did I help you complete your education, I got you to end the suffering of your mother!”

She adopted a nonchalant pose, stroking her chin “Or was it your father? That crash they were in made them rather mangled beyond repair, and the vocal chords? Naturally significantly damaged. Couldn’t tell them apart, but sure, blood spills the same either way.”

“SHUT **_UP!_** ” Angela screamed, twisting frightfully enough in the chair that it pulled up from the concrete floor and she landed painfully on her side with a yelp, shooting pain through her leg from her still-recovering knees. Moira crouched down with a faint frown in her thin face, a mockery of sympathy lacing her unblinking gaze “Now that won’t do at all…”

* * *

“Moira— ** _Moira!_** ”

Akande angrily thumbed his phone to hang up the fifth attempt at calling his colleague’s phone, the previous four times ringing out to nothing. The last he had heard from her was last night, saying something about seizing on a plan to be reunited with that Dr Ziegler woman; given the radio silence, he had to presume she was successful and she was going out of her way to flout the one rule he had given her— _do not let this flight of fancy interfere with the mission_.

“Damn it all!”

It was an unpleasant reminder that ever since Reyes’ death, his attempt to take a hold of the Talon reins was proving to be abortive and extremely unwieldy at best. His leadership simply did not command the attention of the Vagos arm of the PMC, nor even respect from his mercenary colleagues—the only respect they afforded him was accepting the de facto title of leader passed to him by Reyes, if little else.

And judging by the sudden weight tumbling down on him, he had the misfortune of wrong time, wrong place on top of everything. The plan was to approach Del Perro Pier for a bit of fresh air, and to perhaps speak with the Vagos leadership that skulked beneath now and again—although with Moira’s disappearing off the grid he figured he would need to beeline to her last location, but given his southern approach from the nearby Vespucci Canal apartments, he seemed to have calculated terribly.

“Thanks for havin’ the decency to show up near me again, y’sonnovabitch!”

Akande buckled to one knee, gathering his wherewithal and focus to carry the sudden weight of Jesse McCree atop of him, and launch him into some stand flogging t-shirts, fitness sports bottles and tiny weights plastered with ‘Vespucci Beach’ logos. The sound of empty bottles bopped against the concrete around the cowboy as he coughed and tried to gather himself to his feet, when Akande grabbed his collar, huffing through his nostrils like a furious bull “You will not interrupt me, not when I am about to do you and your extended family a favour.”

“The hell you talkin’ about?! Y’gonna give em 9mm aspirin too like y’did my dad!?” McCree barked, scurrying in the burly man’s vice grip. Akande merely gave him a weary look that was almost paternal in nature, nonchalantly throwing him into the outdoor gym almost opposite the heady scented Smoke on the Water shop, his clothes tangling in the weights and frames. Just as the mercenary stopped to look around and challenge any staring civilians, his steely gaze caught that of a single eye blaring fury into the back of his skull.

Ana bared her teeth in a snarl like a grand matriarch of her pride finding her territory impinged on.

“ _Leave_.”

For the first time in decades, tall, fearsome Akande Ogundimu felt himself briefly totter on his feet, quivering once under the unyielding cycloptic stare of Merryweather’s Egyptian veteran. Transfixed to where he stood briefly out of raw awe, he shortly bolted, gathering his scattered thoughts to direct him to wherever Moira had dragged that poor doctor last.

Once the mighty fellow was out of her field of vision, Ana rushed to the pained heap that tried to struggle out of the mess of bars and weights his clothes and limbs wrapped about “Jesse! What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Been tryna get him for killin’ my pa, dang it! Don’t tell me yer gonna make me stop too!”

Just as soon as the old sniper pried him from his impromptu prison, she grabbed his chin just a little too firmly and forced him to look at her “I am only going to say this once, Jesse. You are starting to resemble Gabriel’s later self, more so than his younger self. Do not drive yourself into an early grave as he did. This is not what Jack wanted for you.”

Jesse shut his mouth, clenching his jaw tightly and looking up at Ana with a furrowed brow “Well then, whatcha planning? Y’gonna git Angie to wrap me in bubble paper n’ shunt me up someplace?”

The older Amari sighed, and her glare evaporated as she glanced over her shoulder “No, even if I wanted to, she’s been missing a day after Fareeha left--.”

“What? Where’s Faree gone?”

“She’s on a mission,” was the explanation, but given the delivery of it, it didn’t take much for Jesse to note the bitter tone in Ana’s voice “She’ll be back tomorrow as far as I know. I want to look for Angela once I know you’re not getting yourself killed.”

“S’that a way yer sayin’ yer minding me now?” Jesse asked, standing upright and clear of her height by a good foot in verticality. She affected a faint smile and pat his arm gently.

“If that’s what’ll redirect the angry wind in your sails into something more productive, certainly. Now, come help me with finding Angela. Our hides are as good as tanned once Fareeha returns to find no beautiful blonde practitioner awaiting her in her home.”

* * *

Moira’s last location was on South Rockford Drive, in a corner of Little Seoul that looked over onto the picturesque edge of the Vespucci Canals, a building with ‘Offices to Let’ draped by the ‘Paper Supplies’ sign; Akande knew it well as the choice warehouse for Vagos to drag anyone they figured knew something, so they could beat it out of them. The chances that Angela was suffering here were many, and he grit his teeth as he kicked the door in, spooking the Irish woman.

“ _Jesus_ , Akande, give a bitta warning before you level the fucking door!”

Her colleague didn’t respond for a moment, staring at the imprisoned Swiss doctor who was still tied to the chair, still on her side but with a haunting vacancy to her dulled blue eyes, mouth slightly ajar like she was dead but for the tiniest whimper every few seconds. Akande’s eyes moved from Angela’s broken form to an entirely too smug Moira.

“ _This_ … is the doctor who mangled Reyes?”

“The very same,” the slender viper of a woman murmured, collecting her composure again after the fright her fellow Talon merc gave her “It was nice to reunite and remind her of the little favour I did, especially in light of her failure to fix our Gabe’s face.”

Akande carefully knelt down beside the incapacitated blonde, looking at deep bags under her eyes and the faintest trail of saliva on the floor like her brain had ceased intelligent function some time ago. He hadn’t seen the effect of mental torture on any civilian before, and he’d rather he didn’t see it again; incensed, he snarled at Moira “What did you _do_ to her!?”

“Nothing of the sort you’re thinking,” the geneticist huffed, casually leaning against a bare wall and weaving thin fingers through red hair “I’m a woman of class, Ogundimu! I just took her down through Memory Lane, where she got her medical license by putting one of her mangled parents out of their misery. The official records said they died in the crash, but I had to have a little bit of fun sure, y’know what I’m like. Kept one alive long enough to see if she’d be ruthless enough to do it, and with enough pushing, even pure sorts like her can’t get out of doing cutthroat things so easily!”

Her superior was stone-cold in silence, which she took as an excuse to continue “It was quite something. A veritable angel from on high with her blonde hair, blue eyes and gorgeous looks wanting to do right on this world, and there she was cornered with the fact that no one was leaving that morgue without making that incision on her mutilated, barely alive parent—whichever one it was—and letting them finally die like that horrific crash should’ve caused in the first place. It would’ve been me, but Angie proved she was like everyone else. Quite a vision, I must say.”

“A vision.” Akande repeated it once, and then a few more times under his breath, visibly repulsed “You’re more twisted than I thought within the realms of possibility. You are **not** going to toy with this poor woman anymore.”

“What!? Ah c’mon Akande, y’can’t just take Angie out of my hands like that! I worked hard to get a hold of her for catch up’s sake--.”

“There is to be NO COLLATERAL on my watch!” he suddenly roared, standing up to his feet and bristling with an untold fury “You do not get to do this to anyone! I thought you meant to just speak to this woman, not make her relive trauma you put her through! Our MISSION is the most important thing, you psychotic fool!”

“I—I resent that label,” Moira feebly protested, cowed into silence by the terrifying boom that was an angry Akande, hugging the walls and shrinking away. She watched, neutered into inaction as he furiously freed a limp Angela Ziegler and yanked her to her feet.

“O’Deorain, get out of here now. Skulk to your hideout, or to the Talon hideout, or go to Liberty. I have no need of you here after such insubordination.” He scowled harder “And do not think to do anything else unless it is specifically to capture Lacroix and Sombra. It’s no wonder they’re being elusive if you’d rather torture innocents!”

“But she—Reyes’ face, she ruined—”

“ ** _YOU_** are _NOT_ REYES, and YOU DO NOT GET TO _DECIDE_ HER FATE!!”

The explosion of words almost knocked Moira through a plywood door that was barely shouldering her threadbare weight as is, and it was certainly enough to jolt Angela back to partial coherence. Upon hearing her whimpering and feeling her body quake, Akande immediately dropped his volume, and started ushering her out “Do not worry. You had no reason to be treated like this. I will send you home.”

Without much warning, he plucked her up and placed her in the rear of a parked car earmarked for Talon agent use, listening attentively to her broken directions towards Richman. Akande internally boiled under the surface at Moira’s actions, resolving to regroup at the Elysian hideout and assess the situation, now that it was beginning to spiral out of control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's all a nonstop fucktrain to the end from here my guys


	11. Infiltration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Gang Destroy Talon Servers

The weather in Liberty City was a little colder than the almost permanent sun experienced in the San Andreas state, but it wasn’t anything the little troupe of rogue operatives couldn’t handle; Amélie took great pride in commenting on how cold the Alpine or Pyrenean mountains hemming around the south of France could get. Hana and Sombra, all too used to the blanket warmth of Los Santos, grumbled quietly and shivered underneath their layers. Fareeha said nothing about how she found the chill breeze, but Hana wanted to believe her eomma found it just as intolerable as she did.

Winston had texted Fareeha after Sombra gave him the plan (encrypted, of course), inquiring about their approach, offering the resources of the FIB to pull any and all necessary strings in order to get them to their goal. In a group call, he mentioned that the helicopter tour of Liberty City would be lending them a chopper to at least smokescreen their initial attempt at entry, trusting Fareeha to man that. Sombra breathed a sigh of relief as he confirmed that there would be an elaborate computer set up to maintain contact and monitor the intruder’s progress, less so when Hana was nominated to operate it.

“If I die on this endeavour _bonita_ , you will get haunted by my ass indefinitely.”

Scowling at the slight at her skill, Hana huffed “You say that like I’m gonna suck at this.”

“I’m not confident when your previous experience mostly is confined to videogame shit, and any real-world stuff is you jumping face first into danger without a fucking clue.”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of me being willing to jump into the fray for people who I care about,” the gamer snipped, an edge to her voice as she followed Fareeha to the breezy Castle Gardens helipad on which a Higgins Helitour chopper idled. The lights of the Exchange gleamed brightly in the dusky sky, making the chill bite all the more, as the Talon headquarters slunk behind the huge lights, with the occasional note of purple in their own humble contribution to the luminous display.

“Kids, knock it off,” Fareeha grumbled, casting a brief glance over her shoulder to hush the two up, saving a moment to glare especially hard at Sombra; for being a mercenary she was _extremely_ childish for the pilot’s liking. About to ask about Amélie, she hesitated for a moment, recalling a little too clearly that the same Frenchwoman was responsible for her lung having a hole in it, severing what acquaintance-level friendship they might’ve had through Ana prior “Is your partner ready?”

Hana jumped in way before her Mexican counterpart could hope to respond, spying a fleeting look of flustered blushing on the older woman’s face and taking full advantage “Or should she say your _girrrrrrlfriend_?”

“Fuck _off_!” Sombra squeaked, not at all helped by her new teammate gently shaking her to and fro with overt cooing. Hana relented only when Sombra’s expression became downcast “I _wish_ —I’ve liked her a long while, but with everything that’s happening I don’t really see her feelin’ the same way.”

The Korean blinked “Uh, honestly I wasn’t expecting a confession. I was teasing, but uh, that’s pretty rough buddy.”

Fareeha was well underway speaking to the contact at the helipad about their vehicle, ignoring them and trying not to think too hard about the widow Lacroix, earning a lovesick puppy in the shape of a 30-year-old woman yelling at her ‘host kid’ of all Hana’s 19 years of age.

Sombra sighed and gave a faint excuse of a shrug “Yeah well, I still wanna at least keep her safe whatever way this shit plays out.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Hana indifferently shrugged “Sure, I think you’re a fucking jerk and a huge moron to boot, but I don’t want you and Lacroix to get killed.”

“ _Thanks_ ,” Sombra deadpanned, about to add another retaliatory quip when Fareeha gestured gruffly to her “Huh? Oh! Shit, right, yeah—hey amiga?”

The phone was shortly answered by a distant sigh “ _Sombra; has Fareeha gotten the aircraft?_ ”

“Yeah, she’s just asking if you’re ready.”

“ _I’m good to go on Ms Song’s signal and further instructions_.”

Sombra felt Hana’s smug look threatening to set her many layers of clothes alight, and turned away from her with an eye roll “Don’t you think she might get me killed?”

“ _What?_ ” There was an audible scoff “ _Please, you underestimate the girl. Her bravado is good at getting her into the same situations that your mouth does for you, but she is very capable at a similar line of work. I have confidence in her. She did punch me a_ **lot** _in that recycling centre. And besides--_.”

Sombra heard her shift about, imagining the massive sniper rifle moving to another shoulder as the former Olympian moved the phone to the opposite ear.

“ _With me behind the scope, no one will dare lay a hand on you. I’ll keep you safe_.”

Before she could even hope to intervene, her face already glowed a healthy red, taking that protective comment a little more to heart than perhaps initially intended. Sombra waited for Hana to make a nosy little jab at her expense but found only a pair of gloved hands (longing for the mechanical keyboard left in Los Santos) shoving her onto the heavy-duty chopper that the FIB ‘acquired’ for their use.

* * *

The helicopter ascended high into the skies above Liberty, and thanks to Fareeha’s expert deduction she brought it to an angle where she was positive Sombra could successfully parachute down onto the top of the Talon building. It was astonishingly risky, and would certainly kill the hacker, hence why Amélie was watching her movements and her finger wrapped around the trigger, ready to fell any obstacles. Hana was ensconced in an array of screens and two laptops, a comically oversized headset firmly clamped on her skull, and the most intense scowl Sombra had ever seen. When pressed, the gamer simply chirped “Just wanna make sure I get this right, get you out alive and in one piece.”

“Touched you care,” she mumbled, somewhat surprised at the earnest meaning in the girl’s voice “Alright--.” She switched the miniscule earpiece on “—I’m going in. Watch out for me.”

“Good luck,” said Fareeha quietly; “Fuck em up,” said Hana cheerfully. Sombra nodded once and hurled herself out of the chopper.

A veritable sea of lights illuminating the cityscape of Liberty unfolded beneath her, obscured here and there by patches of cloud. The weather was due to turn worse, but should this go well, they’d be able to avoid overstretching their stay. Before Sombra could let herself get too far into thought, she realised the window for releasing her parachute, and not slamming herself into the wall at near-fatal speed and peel off for an assuredly fatal plummet to the streets below, was narrowing. With an undignified grunt she yanked it free and found herself dragged upwards by the chute inflating instantly, with an almost whiplash-like speed.

A few blocks away, Amélie Lacroix sighed into the palm of her hand watching Sombra struggle with the newly unfurled parachute.

“ ** _You weren’t exactly deployed in the field, huh?_** ”

“Go fuck yourself Hana,” Sombra grumbled, tumbling to the flat roof with far less finesse than she liked. To her own annoyance, she had to give the gamer some credit when the Korean didn’t even bother to get another verbal jab in as there were more important things to concern herself with.

“ ** _Lacroix, Talon suit en route to investigate the noise Sombra made by landing. Standby_**.”

“ _Acknowledged_ ,” the purr replied over comms; Amélie peered through her scope and looked at the route Hana had roughly mapped out over the floor plans, combined with Sombra’s recollection of where the data servers were located, and began picking out targets she’d need to pare down. Indeed, as Hana pointed out on her map, Amélie saw movement through the vast semi-tinted windows and took aim. As the burly mercenary took the door handle to the roof, the door opened with a muted noise and all Sombra saw was a headless corpse collapse to the ground.

“Thanks, friendly neighbourhood spider,” she quipped, albeit a little shaken by the macabre sight; she couldn’t help but wonder how many of their old colleagues she hated, when her trigger finger couldn’t find the courage to do the same to her Egyptian mentor.

“ _Keep going. I have your back_.”

“Thanks babe,” was out of Sombra’s mouth before she could hope to censor herself. To her immense relief, Amélie took it in her stride and as she stalked the corridors steadily, coordinating with Hana so she could pull down the security, she heard thumps in the dozen. Every new door on her path she encountered more dead Talon operatives, but none she knew. Was there a change in the old guard? Her backup gun, found beside the little battlestation that Hana was currently sitting at, sat in its holster, cold and unused. If Sombra could help it, she’d keep it that way.

“I think I’m a couple of doors away.”

“ ** _You’re right. Watch out Amélie, she’s gone into a blindspot now, so you won’t be able to hit anyone getting to that room_**.”

There was a stiff huff on the other end of comms “ _I think I can tell for myself if I can’t see her. Just… be careful Sombra, please_.”

“ ** _Awww_** ,” Hana simply cooed, quickly shushed into silence by Sombra.

“Knock that the fuck off! If they hear me, I’m _dead_!”

“ ** _Then shut up, jeez not that hard_** ,” Hana retorted. Sombra wanted to punch her stupid little face so much in that moment, fuming. “ ** _But seriously, don’t worry about it. Winston’s been doing work, so if I just mess with the sprinkler system that they have, I can create a distraction_**.”

Sombra crouched and crawled over to the server room, at the end of a long hallway hemmed by doors, her only solace was the fact that it was silent. Just as she observed that, inputting the keycode to the ‘information room’ where she had once spent many hours over the last few years cataloguing terabytes of data on targets, locations and weaponry, a noise sounded, and an alarm shot through the building. She was about to panic but for Hana gruffly interrupting her.

“ ** _Relax! I did that. It’s a few floors below you so they’ll think an intruder’s there fucking with their pots n’ pans. Just go ahead. You’ve got time_**.”

With little else to worry about otherwise, she pried open the door. It was a weird homecoming, in a way, given how a lot of her Talon work took place in this room, though she can’t really say how many people returned to an old family home just to torch the place like she was about to do. Her small packets of C4 were laid around the huge bulky pieces of computer storage strung together to detonate within milliseconds of one another, making sure each server tower had at least one packet and one link to the tower adjacent.

“Alright, I think that’s it. This baby’s rigged to go up. How’s the escape route?”

“ ** _We’re moving over_** ,” Hana replied, now looking at the absurd amount of activity generated in the floors beneath “ ** _I think they’ve twigged that there’s some shit going on. Amélie, can you cover us?_** ”

“ _Gladly_.”

Brief, but to the point. Hana shrugged and felt the tilt of the helicopter as Fareeha guided it towards the Talon rooftop “Prioritise anyone who’s packing anything explosive and projectile, I don’t want to die today.”

“ _You won’t_.” Almost immediately there was an explosion from the corner of the building “ _That was one of them carrying an RPG_.”

“Nice,” Hana gulped, feeling her life retroactively flash before her eyes “Sombra, where you at?”

“Almost there!” the Mexican answered, running at full tilt and trying not to slip in the cooled blood of Amélie’s previous kills to the rooftop “What about you guys?”

The sound of the chopper’s blades was reassuring but still a little bit further away than what the hacker would like. She flung open the rooftop exit and looked upwards to see Fareeha guiding the helicopter steadily to the roof, and hear Hana in stereo barking “ ** _GET ON, THEY’RE SWARMING TO THE ROOF!_** ”

“ _I’m doing what I can!_ ” the Frenchwoman growled, with shots coming as rapidly as the huge rifle could manage, downing some of the foot soldiers approaching the upper floors with speed. She couldn’t hope to cover all of them, everyone in this operation knew that; so Sombra looked up at the hovering vehicle above and prayed rapidly for her legs to carry her in a jump that she needed to make.

Amélie looked over through her scope, and her heart stopped.

Sombra ran across the roof, just as angry voices roared closer behind her, and leapt for the helicopter’s landing rail above a drop of over 1,000ft, to the tune of half of the server room floor completely exploding and going up in flames.

Her heart only returned to work when she saw Sombra seize the rail with one hand, and then the other, flailing madly in mid-air until Hana Song leaned out of the hatch ignoring Talon gunfire to haul her in, shutting the door behind her. The rendezvous point was back at the Helitour station, so Amélie quickly brought herself to her senses and fled as quickly as possible.

She promised herself that when she saw the hacker, she would slap her first for scaring the shit out of her with that stunt, and then hug her for successfully pulling it off. Returning to Los Santos after reuniting would be a comparative breeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (but when they return to Los Santos, it was not going to be a breeze)


	12. Rescue Mission: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another kidnapping, but Hana rises to the task of rescue.

Compared to the gloomy, wintry vibe that always seemed to lurk around Liberty City, Los Santos was a positive bevy of sunshine and summer luminescence. If you ask anyone local to either city, Los Santos was hiding the fetid interior with its glamour of brightness, whereas Liberty City was more honest in a way by not pretending the content of its urban landscape was just as grim as the atmosphere around it. Certainly, Fareeha, having forgotten it in her brief stint back in Liberty after almost three decades away from it, got a reminder when her troupe returned home from their mission.

She took all of them to the house nestled in Richman, mostly continuing to be courteous to Amélie and Sombra alike seeing as they kept true to their word in keeping non-Talon personnel safe. Opening the door, she wasn’t expecting to see her mother stalking around the kitchen with an unreadable look on her face, and Angela shivering on the couch when the thermometers said the temperature would be the ever-warm Los Santos heat.

“What--.”

“A cab pulled up while I was walking by Del Perro Pier, and she fell out of it clutching a note. The driver looked terrified and said the ride was free; some terrifying man put her into the back and asked him to find me, presumably using my description.” Ana took the glass of water sitting on the kitchen island and moved to where Angela was shuddering lightly, setting it on the coffee table in front of her “The note was a hastily scribbled apology from Akande. It seems one of his subordinates, an O’Deorain--.”

The sudden yelp of fear out of the Swiss woman cut clean through Ana’s sentence, but she sighed and merely continued on “—this person knew Angela and had kidnapped her. I don’t know what happened, but I’d like to get an answer. It seems now we’re indeed involved in Talon’s business, regretfully.”

She eyed Amélie with a wariness that heaved with myriad emotions, face to face with her for the first time in years, but her former student didn’t care to share the exchange. Concern ruled Lacroix as she hastened to see Angela, murmuring something in French laden with dread at what that _evil_ woman might’ve done, but for Fareeha suddenly blocking her and yanking her back.

“ **Don’t** \--!” Fareeha snarled protectively, the rest of her growl dying in her throat seeing Amélie’s confused and worried expression, turning the snarl into a barely perceptible sigh as she tried to calm her raised hackles “Just… give her space. I want to know if she’s in one piece.”

The Frenchwoman backed down, murmuring an apology that Fareeha deflected with a half-hearted shrug. Hana was about to burst forward to reassure her eomma #2 that she was safe, but her phone suddenly blared into life with an obnoxious DJ Lucio track for a ringtone, bearing Satya’s number on it—or rather, as Hana had put her down in the contacts list, ‘Tigress GF’, which Sombra noticed.

“Babe, what’s up?”

An ugly, and extremely masculine, laugh answered her. All of the colour bled from the gamer’s face, and thanks to the volume from the receiver, the hacker could hear just as well.

“ **Babe? Is this what the bitch is called? Cute! Too bad she’s _ours_ now. Bitch was sniffing around after her blonde bimbo friend!** ”

Hana’s face contorted into raw horror, Sombra’s ear twigged at the man’s accent, sensing a connection to someone she was aware of back in the Talon days. This man however, wasn’t Talon, but “Hey, is that--?”

“ **Whoa, thought you were dead hombre!** ” the man guffawed “ **I wish you were though. Fuckin hated you tellin’ us Vagos what to do! Ball’s in our court now.** ”

“You can suck my non-existent pair, fuckwit,” Hana growled, staring hard at Sombra as if she had all the answers to the storm of questions swirling in Hana’s mind. “Where are you!?”

“ **That’d be telling! Guess this lady’s ours. Adios!** ”

The call dropped, and just as quickly, Hana pocketed her phone and seized Sombra by the collar, shoving her to the nearest wall and bared her teeth, livid.

“Tell me. Where. Would. They. Be.”

“They wouldn’t be in the Murietta area,” the hacker started, inwardly quashing the immediate reaction to protest and defend herself against being associated with the fucking Vagos of all people “That was a joint Talon-Vagos operation ‘til your host mom blew it the fuck up. I think Elysian docks—yeah, that’s where the Vagos’ve taken to in the last 6 months to hide their contraband. Might’ve moved their whole operation there.”

Hana barely uttered a thank you as she almost broke the door off of its hinges bolting outside. Fareeha heard her yelling at a taxi and she hurried out to follow “ **Hana!** Where are you going?”

She roared as she all but vaulted into the back seat of the cab “I’m getting Satya’s ride ** _, then I’m going to save my fucking girlfriend!_** ”   
As she saw her eomma start forward she shouted in addition “Don’t follow me unless you wanna fucking help!”

Meanwhile, Amélie hastened to Sombra, sharing a deeply worried glance. Too many people were starting to get affected by their plight; though it confirmed that Akande was struggling to maintain influence and control over the PMC he effectively inherited, it was coming uncomfortably close to costing them dearly being so unable to predict what was to happen next.

“So much for collateral,” Sombra coughed, finding air easier to breathe now that the Korean’s hands weren’t more or less around her neck “We gotta help them. Gotta make it even for them helping us.”

“Right,” Amélie nodded, looking over at Ana and then Fareeha who came back in “We’ll lead you to the specific warehouses that the Vagos use.”

“We’re taking Angela with us,” Ana gruffly stated, glaring at her daughter who clearly abhorred the mere concept of it. It was easier than looking at Amélie in any way “I don’t trust chaos. It’s easier to keep an eye on her when she’s in the same vehicle, rather than risk some other wildcard factor putting her in danger if she stays put.”

The logic in any other situation would have been somewhat poor but considering how things escalated, Fareeha had to concede this to her mother. She nodded in begrudging defeat, looking at the former Talon employees “We should tail Hana first.”

* * *

The Shimada building in Downtown was quiet, as the clan painstakingly ensured to maintain it in the din of Los Santos daily life, until the doors burst open with a furious looking Korean student looking around like she had the scent of blood. The receptionist, once she had extracted herself from the ground where the surprise had dropped her, moved to call security, until Hana Song stormed over and grabbed her hand painfully.

“Call Hanzo.”

“M-Miss, I can’t do that, he’s--.”

“I don’t think you understand how important this is,” Hana hissed, brows furrowed but eyes wide and blazing with righteous fury swirling within and barely tethered back “ **Call. Hanzo**.”

“Sh…Shimada-san? A girl--.”

“ ** _Hana Song!_** ”

“Hana Song is here to see you--.” Mere seconds later, and the man himself appeared in haste, staring at Hana for answers that he only got when she wrenched down on his wrist and yanked him bodily out of the building to where she parked half on the curb.

“What is the meaning of this?!”

“Satya’s been kidnapped by the Vagos; they got Angela first so she went to look for her,” Hana growled as she essentially kicked the defacto leader of the Shimada family into the driver’s seat of Satya’s car “So she’s down in an Elysian warehouse scared out of her mind—I don’t even want to think what’s happened to her— and I do not want to leave her there any fucking longer! You’re driving, and you’re bringing your boys too.”

Hanzo sputtered as she sat in the shotgun seat, buckling herself in “You’re asking me to start a _turf war_ with the Vagos so you can get Satya out?”

“ _Listen here_ fucko, I don’t care that you can’t seem to fathom feelings for another person nor do I give an iota of a shit about the fact you might’ve fucked her and you’re swimming in awkward about this here right now—” Hana took a big gulp of air, starting to get ruddy-cheeked from breathlessness “—but I would do a lot worse than a turf war if it meant I can _save her life_!”

Hanzo stared at her for perhaps one second, before the stirring display of dedication Hana showed moved him to start the car and shoot off of the curb towards the docks. His face was sullen, but he too brimmed with a similar just vehemence that the gamer radiated for a mile radius.

* * *

Zarya blinked as she watched the one vibrant blue Obey Tailgater hurtle down past the Canals towards Downtown, opting to pluck out her phone and call the owner. McCree walked into her back when she abruptly stopped, letting out a grumble as Mei giggled affectionately at his misfortune. Instead of Fareeha answering the phone, she heard a distinctly foreign voice that radiated cheese, wine and snobbery.

“This is not Fareeha speaking to me, is it?” Zarya rumbled ominously “If you have stolen her phone as well as her vehicle, I will have to exact justice.”

“N-no, that’s not necessary,” Amélie quickly replied “Fareeha’s driving her car, I’m looking after her phone in case there were calls. Do you know Hana?”

“Ah of course, the hare that belies a fierce tiger spirit! That is what Ana spoke of her; I can believe it if she has tamed Satya. Why?”

“Satya was kidnapped, Hana’s looking for her. We’re making sure she doesn’t get herself killed--”

Unbeknownst to Zarya, she had the phone on speaker. McCree shook his head rapidly and snatched it out of the weightlifter’s mighty shovel-sized hand “Hey, why’s Satya kidnapped?!”

“Angela was kidnapped by Talon mooks,” a strong accent chimed in, not French but certainly tinged with a different Romance language “And Satya went looking, then got snatched by some other fuckers. It’s kinda related to us dodging this mercenary guy—”

“Is it Akande Ogundimu!?” McCree suddenly barked in his excitement.

“How’d you guess?”

“I’m going there right the fuck now!!” he declared, running to his vehicle parked behind them, as equally rugged as him, hopping into it with haste. The only thing that stopped him from flooring it as soon as his rear met the upholstery was Zarya’s vast arms pressing into the bonnet and staring at him.

“You are _not_ going alone.”

“C’mon Zar! I ain’t gonna get you killed in case this gets me first, y’don’t need to get involved.”

The car dipped down a little more as she pushed more insistently “No. You are effectively Fareeha’s brother—an idiot brother, but certainly one I could believe as her brother with how dense she is—and you have also charmed Mei with your absurd fashion sense. I am involved whether you like this or not.”

Slamming his hands against the wheel, he threw his head back into the headrest behind him and sighed angrily and exasperatedly “Jesus Christ you are the worst. Fine, fine.”

“Hey, don’t leave me behind!” Mei suddenly chimed in, hastening to Zarya’s side and also putting a hand on the bonnet “I’m coming with.”

“No,” said the duo in almost perfect harmony, as Zarya squeezed herself into the back seat (the front seat couldn’t quite accommodate her immense muscle).

“If the two of you are going to rush into a dangerous situation, at least let me be the getaway driver!” Mei persisted, smacking the Russian’s bulky arm and insistently barging into the shotgun seat “And that’s a fact—you’re not getting rid of me that easily!”

McCree craned his head around to look at Zarya, pained by the intrusion. His newfound comrade in arms shrugged with an eye roll “Ah, she has a point about being a getaway driver.”

* * *

Satya’s sleek car skidded as Hanzo pulled the handbrake, wheels screeching against the chipped concrete ground as it came to a halt at the end of Signal St, an isolated pier between the busier ones east and west of it. Hana immediately sprung out, head whipping back and forth until she spotted the Vagos lurking near one warehouse in particular on the right-hand side, where Walker Logistics would normally be. She looked at Hanzo, and he hurriedly scrambled to call for backup in order to scatter them, dragging her down behind the car to shield them from the Vagos’ sight.

Hanzo looked intently at her “Don’t die on me, Ms Song; I fear the repercussions.”

Hana’s eyes glowed with resolve and the kind of courage that gave even him pause for thought “It’s gonna take a lot more to take me out.”

He was a little disarmed by that, regarding the determination in her expression with surprise but ultimately admiration won through “You’re right. You were taken in under the wing of the Amaris; I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Right,” Hana grinned, looking past Hanzo towards the Los Santos mainland to see a horde of black and green vehicles in the distance, reaching over to pat his shoulder firmly. “I appreciate this a lot, y’know.”

“I’ll back you up,” he gruffly asserted as she stood up, just as the Vagos were distracted by the arrival of dozens of Shimada cars. Gunfire sounded into the sky as the two forces collided, and Hana took her moment to dart towards the warehouse when the Vagos grunts were occupied in the firefight. She managed to hide behind a couple of boxes and slink in when all of their focus was on the enemy suits that started suddenly swarming them, opening the door and slipping in as the cacophony from the bullet exchange rose into the air.

Hana got into the warehouse, pressing herself between the nearest set of shelves and the wall and vanishing from sight, looking around the corner to see if there were any guards between her and her precious quarry. Nothing, so presumably everyone who was in here was called out by the chaos outside; Hana slunk by and into the innermost ‘chamber’ where she spotted Satya tied to a chair in the middle of a vast space. Abandoning all pretences of priorities, she rushed to Satya’s side without caring to check for further signs of life and found a burly man in a sleeveless yellow shirt body blocking her, as well as a dull, deep pain in her side.

Glancing down, Hana realised there was a switchblade embedded in her flank, looking up at the brute who was somewhere between annoyed at the intrusion and amused at the gamer’s shocked expression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CLIFFHANGERS ARE A BITCH BUT IN MY DEFENCE IT'S EASIER TO SPLIT THIS BEHEMOTH CHAPTER IN GENERAL IM SORRY


	13. Rescue Mission: Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other side of the cliffhanger, and the final showdown is set up.

“What’s the matter? Did the knife cut you off?” he chuckled darkly “Didn’t think this fine thing had an admirer.”

Hana heard Satya’s voice quietly asking for her, pleading with the man to not hurt her—a second too late—as well as Hanzo stealing in and announcing himself by breaking a Vagos grunt’s neck, distracting Hana’s attacker.

“What--!?” he started, and time slowed down. The Korean looked down at the blade again, and summoning inhuman levels of pain tolerance, furious tenacity from her eomma, self-defence lessons and precise anatomical knowledge on what to attack from her honorary halmeoni and halabeoji, wrenched it out of her body and immediately cut his throat in the distraction. He dropped down dead, looking as surprised as she was at herself and what she just did.

“Hana!” Hanzo shouted, seeing claret blossom on her powder-blue branded D.Va shirt “ ** _Hana_** , are you okay?!”

She ignored him, having only eyes for her horrified surgeon still tied to the chair, cutting the rope with the bloodied knife and feeling unsteady as adrenaline drained along with her blood “Babe… babe they didn’t do anything to you, did they?”

“No, they—” Satya was clearly fighting to stave off an extremely justified panic attack, wide-eyed and fearful as she looked at a wound she desperately wanted to treat “Just made a big display of it, nothing happened. Complained about an Akande for ‘cramping their style’—.”

“Ah, that would be me then.”

Hanzo turned at such speed Satya and Hana thought he almost broke his own spine “You— _You’re_ Akande Ogundimu?!”

“Yes,” the imposing Talon leader answered, his tone of voice cordial if flippant about the circumstances he just ambled in on “I thank you for disposing with those turncoats. Their lack of morals is something I cannot permit, so you saved me the trouble. I’d better get to whipping the others in shape.”

The Los Santos Shimada leader was visibly divided between wanting to lead his men in the spontaneous gang war that Hana effectively started, and looking after Hana as she continued to bleed out. At very least, it was a small wound that bled slowly, he noted as he hastened over to catch the girl when she wobbled. Satya remained seated, utilising breathing exercises to try and calm her palpitating heart in the throes of anxiety, muttering about needing tools to even stitch it closed for now.

“B…babe I brought—I brought the car,” Hana said, fighting so hard to remain upright and alert “Your first aid kit and emergency surgery gear are still—they’re in the trunk, right?”

“Yes,” Satya answered quickly, hope lacing through her shaken demeanour “Yes, let me try patch you up for now, until we can get you to a hospital.”

“I’m fine,” she growled, glancing over at Hanzo who picked the place clean of ammunition and guns, stalking around and ensuring the safety of the building “Hey, how are your boys?”

“I’m confident they could take these men,” he answered, loading up a pistol “Their equipment is lacking in comparison to our armoury. Presumably, when Talon was thrown into chaos, their weapons deal died a pathetic death too. A net gain for us, and something I think I’ll have to thank Fareeha for blowing up that Murietta hold.”

Satya made a mental note to ask Fareeha about that much later when they all got out alive.

Hanzo peered around the vast shutter door at the scene, seeing gunfire exchanges dotted about the mercifully empty pier, with various people on either side taking cover among the scattered cars. He noticed another car that was not Satya’s, nor Shimada branded; first a blue Obey Tailgater that he knew to be Fareeha’s some couple hundred feet away, and a miserable looking sedan pulled up a short distance from the firefight and three very odd people got out of it, hiding behind the car. Other civilians, _here_?

He moved in once more, just to get Hana on his back since he wasn’t going to trust her walking while losing blood, urging Satya to follow close. Hanzo led the way to her car, and unlocking the rear of the vehicle, he scrabbled blindly at what boxes he could find, handing them to Satya as she looked over Hana’s stab wound. The Shimada regarded her for a second, noting that her panic was shelved when she had something to focus on, relieved at that much as he turned his attention to the Amari squad, also taking shelter from the bullets flying across the dock. He heard panic in screeching Spanish, and after delivering some potshots of his own successfully downing 3 men, he spotted a few more bolting further down into the larger building opposite, where one could only assume moderately sized boats were either assembled or cleaned.

Making an attempt at contact, he called Fareeha’s phone since that was a damn easier and safer means of communication than shouting over carnage and risking getting shot.

“Fareeha! Is that you across the way?”

“ _Yeah! Where’s Hana?_ ”

“She got Satya—she’s also been stabbed but she killed the man who did it, with his own knife that she was stabbed with no less.”

There was audible shock and what he could only discern as proud sounding Arabic from Ana in the distance. Fareeha merely offered “ _Holy… holy **shit**_.”

“ _The hare is truly a tigress now!_ ” Ana loudly declared over the line.

“Did you see Akande?” Hanzo pressed “I can’t see him outside. I can only assume he’s disciplining these Vagos for kidnapping Satya.”

“ _Probably, I can’t see him either—or at least from Lacroix’s description of him. I kinda hope that stays the same since there’s a moron in a cowboy hat who really wants to kill him and is stupid enough to jump into a gunfight to chase him—uh, short answer is that it’s revenge, long answer to come later after we all leave alive_.”

“Got it,” he brusquely answered, looking over at Hana who wound a bandage around her fresh stitches and kissed Satya’s nose in gratitude “Can you shoot?”

“Fuck yeah my dude,” she nodded, though still a little groggy, and accepted the Uzi from him. Satya’s nerves returned, especially as Akande emerged from a different warehouse throwing some Vagos out into the fight.

“Don’t open fire unless you’re quite clear from our allies,” Hanzo snipped, very aware she was a little compromised in aim right now.

“Firstly, was gonna do that anyway; secondly, fuck you you’re not my dad,” Hana retorted, peering over the car at the scene. The expression was a little more her usual self, which visibly helped Satya’s tense person, until that collectively went out the window when a truck horn cut through the shots. Hanzo realised that the hulking articulated truck that appeared must’ve been driven by those men who fled earlier, something that could change the field of play dramatically. He figured everyone would lay low, but that wasn’t to be.

McCree heard Akande, and against all sense, stood up burning for revenge. He ignored the losing battle the Vagos were fighting, now dwindled sharply in number, and charged for him with a loud wordless roar. Zarya called out after him, remaining in her reasonably safe spot by his car, but Mei gave chase outright to her horror. The truck’s accelerator was floored.

“Jesse, wait!”

He turned, and in turning he realised the truck’s path would bring it in range of bulldozing and easily killing Mei. In the milliseconds that followed, the scruffy cowboy dropped all pretence of avenging his adoptive father and lunged hard with his left arm forward towards Mei, shoving her while falling onto his gut with all his might back to relative safety as the truck collided with a Shimada car, and flipped.

He didn’t have time to get up, as the truck, still with its cargo trailer attached, crashed down and pinned his left forearm down, dragging him a few metres and forcing him to tumble against the rough concrete. McCree howled in agony, and Mei realised in abject horror that she at fault for this, as Zarya dragged her further back and behind her muscular bulk.

Akande, midway through dispatching the last of his unruly Vagos henchmen, looked and shook his head sadly, but any attempt to free him was postponed when Sombra and Lacroix stood up from a separate vehicle hidden behind the Tailgater. They were finally within his grasp. Sombra’s face was contorted into anger, running ahead but not towards Akande, more as if she was trying to draw him away, past Satya’s car and towards the end of the pier.

“We’re here now you shithead; stop getting people involved! I thought **_you_** introduced that _no collateral_ rule to Gabe!”

“Sombra--,” Amélie started, hastening to her side and standing ahead of her “Don’t goad him.”

“Circumstances… got out of hand,” Akande very diplomatically started, looking over his shoulder “Blame Moira. Blame the Vagos.”

The truck wreckage was smouldering, as if it was just about to catch fire. By now Satya, Hana and Hanzo had joined the others, watching as the surviving Vagos simply fled entirely. The situation looked grim; despite Zarya’s attempts, even with assistance, the truck was not moving. The cargo trailer was full of something unspeakably heavy, but there was no time to unload it. Angela, who had been shell-shocked into silence, looked at Satya and asked quietly “Do you have your tools with you?”

“Huh? What? Oh, yes,” Satya answered, realising Angela’s line of inquiry and what she was hinting towards. Mei was crying as McCree was writhing in agony on the ground and vocalising his pain nonstop. Fareeha had her hands on her head, kicking an empty Shimada car and glaring at the underling that dared to try speak up about the paintwork on it.

“What’re we going to do?! Oh god this is all my fault! I’m so sorry Jesse, I should’ve stayed behind!” Mei wailed, covering her face.

“You’re all going to want to get away from this truck as soon as possible,” Hanzo stated, eyeing the lick of flame beginning near the engine “This is going to blow and its going to take him with it.”

“It’s not,” Angela simply shrugged, watching Satya run to the car (briefly looking at the Talon staredown) and retrieve her surgeon’s tools “I’m going to call an ambulance to prevent gangrene getting a chance to set in, but you’re going to need to amputate him now.”

“WHAT?!” Mei and Fareeha both yelled, Zarya adding a quieter one behind them.

“His life, or his arm,” Angela simply stated, hunkering down to prepare something reasonably clean as Satya prepared herself.

“Zarya, if you please,” Satya muttered to the weightlifter “I need you to hold him down.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this isn't really a cliffhanger either but the next chapter takes place IMMEDIATELY after this one ends


	14. Eye of the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the midst of chaos, a terrible serenity.

 “We’re here now you shithead; stop getting people involved! I thought **_you_** introduced that _no collateral_ rule to Gabe!”

“Sombra--,” Amélie started, hastening to her side and standing ahead of her “Don’t goad him.”

“Circumstances… got out of hand,” Akande very diplomatically started with a small wave of his hand, looking over his shoulder “Blame Moira. Blame the Vagos.”

“Convenient scapegoats more like,” Sombra snipped, all thin muscles coiled into action and moving to Amélie’s side, despite the former part of the flight or fight response pleading with her to get the fuck out of there “Too bad you’re still responsible for trying and failing to control them.”

“Sombra _please_ ,” the Frenchwoman pleaded faintly, drowned out when a bloodcurdling scream sounded out from behind the showdown, something the three recognised as McCree’s as it filled the air, stuttering to a stop as he ostensibly passed out from the pain, sirens approaching. Akande refused to move, as if looking away would cause the two women to slip from his grasp anew, staring them down, even as dozens of feet were heard running further away, and the truck behind him ignited with a violent explosion.

The force reverberated through everyone, but the man known as Doomfist didn’t let it buckle his proud posture even once, whereas Amélie and Sombra found themselves toppled and scrambling to get back to their feet. The aftermath was grim to say the least; what was left of the truck had in fact ignited and combusted several adjacent cars, forming a wall of burning metal and rubber (and some meat, turning stomachs, as bodies trapped in the truck ignited), ensuring that there was almost no avenue of escape for either of them, something the women recognised with a particularly sinking feeling in their guts.

“I will ask only one more time,” Akande started, realising that he was now very much alone with them and with no chance of interference from what he could tell “Will you return to Talon, or will you choose to die instead?”

 “You better just be talking to me with that crappy excuse for a choice!” Sombra snarled, adrenaline coursing her veins as she stepped closer to Akande “Amélie doesn’t factor into this at all—she was blackmailed into Talon and I won’t see her coaxed the fuck back with more shitty tactics!”

Sirens blared louder over the sounds of flame licking the metal husks that were vehicles previously; the ambulances evidently arrived. The looming mercenary’s expression remained stoic, his body unmoving as he regarded the agitated hacker evenly “She was part of Talon, she must return to Talon, or she must die—as with you.”

“I don’t intend to have anything to do with Talon,” Amélie finally spoke, breathing in deeply as she tried to summon what courage she had left “I was freed with the intention of living a peaceful civilian life that you have since jeopardised. I would like to keep my life free as I wish.”

“Yeah, hear that?!” Sombra roared, almost in Akande’s face “You’re taking her back over my fucking dead body--!”

“Very well,” he answered, turning back towards the fiery wreckage “Enjoy your freedom for what few seconds you have left.”

Before either of them could hope to ask what that meant, Akande suddenly swung back around violently, a punch finding Sombra’s torso with such violence that snapping was extremely audible despite the chaos around them, lifting her into the air by a couple of feet. There was no sound out of the Mexican otherwise, asides from deeply uncomfortable gurgling which went unheard over Amélie’s horrified shriek. Time seemed to slow down as the mercenary’s fist lifted her into the air, her body crumpling uselessly around the hydraulic force shattering her ribcage almost in its entirety, every little increment along the bone broken in slow motion. Flecks of red spattered out of Sombra’s mouth, the woman wide-eyed as air was brutally forced out of her now-brutalised lungs.

Sombra dropped unceremoniously to the ground, writhing and alternating between gasping and coughing, with blood beginning to foam up in her mouth. The Talon leader looked almost mournful as he shook out the hand that rendered the hacker thusly, looking at Amélie as if to simply state she was next, but all the former Olympian could focus on was cradling Sombra and panicking, even if she had no idea how to even begin helping her.

“Sombra! Sombra, **_please_** —,” she feebly stuttered, resting the hacker’s head in the crook of her arm and frantically looking at whatever she could possibly do to help. “I _can’t_ lose you like I lost Gérard too!”

The wounded, possibly dying, woman coughed harder, her lips red for reasons that were far from makeup related, focusing on Amélie’s face with determination as she tried to rein in her weakened body to get out what she had to say. It took a few deeply uncomfortable seconds as she sputtered and gasped like a fish taken from the water, trying so hard to find the oxygen necessary to keep going “If—If I die—please… Olivia—C-Colomar—”

“Olivia Colomar?” Amélie repeated, her other hand now on Sombra’s face, feeling tears blooming in the corners of her eyes, the question she asked brief but stinging her vision and soul just as much “Next of kin?”

“ ** _Me_** ,” Sombra managed through wet coughing and violent, ragged damp breathing, eyes briefly darting over to see Akande approaching slowly “ _My name_.”

“Forgive me, Lacroix, but I must do this,” Akande spoke then, cutting clear through what feeble muttering the Mexican woman could get out “You must die with her.”

The sniper looked up, hatred written all over her tear-streaked face although she offered no further resistance, willing to go only because he had taken _Olivia’s_ life, only to see the man stop as if something small hit him. Snarling, Akande turned around and Amélie saw then a significantly large tranquiliser dart embedded into his spine, and then he staggered back, swaying to and fro with the beginnings of a punch at nothing swinging in the air before crumpling to the ground with another dart in his neck.

On the other side, she found her saviour was none other than her old mentor, with a large rifle tailor made to down huge creatures never mind a roided up mercenary. Ana Amari regarded her with an unreadable expression composed of complex myriad emotions through the flames that had started to die down, adversarial grudges twisting with recent camaraderie as FIB and IAA agents swarmed the unconscious Ogundimu, and a revitalised Angela Ziegler—boosted by saving a life and in dire want to save another—charged towards her with Satya Vaswani in tow, shoving a numb Amélie away as they hurried to stabilise Sombra—no, _Olivia Colomar_ —‘s condition.

She watched dazedly as the huge man that she could only presume was Winston shove the smoking wreckage out of the way to allow paramedics through, and his agents to drag the head of Talon out. He spared a glance for Amélie, offering her a sympathetic look as he followed his FIB crew back out. Only then did Amélie see Fareeha, by the side of a scruffy fellow who was half hidden under an oxygen mask, with his left arm mostly missing from the upper arm down and encapsulated in a tourniquet soaked in blood, with Ana shortly helping the paramedics there to hoist his trolley into the ambulance. She could distantly see Hana holding her gut being helped in by Lena, clearly much better from her own encounter with Akande, until her view was filled by green uniforms and a medical trolley taking Olivia towards another ambulance.

Amélie was faintly aware of strong hands grabbing her shoulders, pulling her to her feet and guiding her out of ground zero, through the smoking vehicles, and into a recently arrived Shimada jeep. The door opened to the smell of fresh Burger Shot food, and the sound of angry arguing in Japanese; looking up, the Frenchwoman realised she was in the company of the scions of the family, Hanzo and Genji, with the latter stuffing his face with fast food at the wheel. If she was in a reasonable state of mind, she would have thanked them for their unusual generosity in bringing her home to Mirror Park simply on a whim, when she did nothing for them—but the fact of that joining how selflessly everyone else gave for her and S- _Olivia’s_ safety simply caused her to sink further into a void black of depression. When did she deserve to have such kindness paid to her, when her mere existence had an orbit of chaos and misery to the point of death for anyone who dared get close to her?

Gabriel may have likened himself to a reaper, but Amélie reckoned she had earned the title surely by how many people found harm or a premature end simply by being around her.

_Olivia_ was a name she just learned; she didn’t want to inscribe this on a headstone, not when it was fresh in her mind and on the tip of her tongue. _Olivia_ was a name of someone she was beginning to feel like she was really getting to know, getting to appreciate, and even enjoy, the company of. _Olivia_ was a name that she had no idea was that of her colleague, a guarded secret that none in Talon even knew, its reveal like being let in on a deeply intimate secret pushed out into the open too soon. Amélie realised that Sombra had been hiding it for a while, intending to tell her at a later point when she felt it was right, hand-in-hand with another truth being revealed and…

Her heart **_hurt_**.

Her heart hurt with the feeling of being torn apart for a second time; this pain was not new but the depth and scope of it wasn’t unlike the initial devastation upon discovering the body of her mutilated husband, the pain of a lovebird denied its mate. And on _that_ note, **_this_** is the realisation that pushes her numb, muted body over the edge, completely breaking down into quivering, mumbling hysterics of sobbing when she saw the tiny spot in Mirror Park she had called home with _her_. With **_Olivia_**.


	15. Rest, Old Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another one-sided conversation with a headstone, the shell-shocked sniper stares at oblivion not unlike Reyes once did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The woman known as Amélie Lacroix dies.

Two days have passed since the chaos in the Elysian docklands, picked dry of everything by LSPD and Weazel News alike, cleaned up by the hapless dock workers who at least got some compensation for shoving hulking burnt out wreckage (and charred human corpses) out of the way. The house in Mirror Park was made for one person, really, but Amélie found it unbearably empty and quiet without the pulse that S—Olivia gave it. Alone, Amélie existed, but did not _live_ , for those two days.

She lived in a blur of nothing, feeling nothing, experiencing nothing. Subsistence was seldom; only small doses when absolutely necessary. 2 hours felt like 12, 12 hours felt like a week, 24 felt like years, 48 an unbearable eternity.

It was after those 48 hours, hearing no word about Olivia, left alone with the most treacherous housemate of all, herself, that Amélie let herself be convinced by her self-loathing and monstrous guilt-powered self-hatred that Akande was right, she must indeed die too.

Ever typical of the lax culture around dangerous weaponry being readily available to the masses, the fact that Amélie looked visibly unwell, acting disjointed and borderline incoherent wasn’t enough to merit a dismissal from the Ammunation store entirely, never mind a background check. She paid for a pistol that was duly handed to her with no delay, and with that in a simple cloth bag, the dishevelled former Olympian had one last destination in mind; Morningwood Cemetery, where Gérard’s remains rested.

The journey to her own final resting place seemed to take forever, unable to see her surroundings any clearer than a misshapen assortment of colours and distorted voices going from vague concern to brazen disgust at the state she was in. Cars swerved around her, horns slammed until they almost broke and drivers roared abuse at her; a symphony of discordant nonsense that Amélie Lacroix never heard.

So many people got hurt because of her. Not just dear Olivia, but Satya Vaswani—kidnapped by the Vagos and terrified out of her mind, Hana Song—stabbed by a Vagos grunt in the blur trying to save Satya, Jesse McCree—lost his arm in the chaos trying to protect a completely innocent Zhou Meiling, Angela Ziegler—abducted by that monster Moira O’Deorain and psychologically tortured; and this before any direct pain Amélie herself had caused, which was visited upon the Amaris in spades. Betraying Ana’s trust and taking her eye, then almost taking her daughter’s life some few years later; Gabriel Reyes fancied himself as the spectre of hatred and pain, but really, his impact was rather paltry compared to how Amélie inflicted those very things on others whether directly or indirectly.

Rockford Hills unfolded ahead of her as Amélie staggered westwards, not caring for how slow her jaywalking pace was, nor for the traffic doing its level best to avoid hitting her, never mind that she really wouldn’t be _that_ opposed to being roadkill. The only factor that kept her going was the need to apologise to the very first victim that turned her into the unlucky charm that brought misery to others in her presence, to apologise to Gérard, and to supplement that apology with a libation of her own blood. She had little else to live for.

The sun continued to cast its immense luminescent blanket across the Los Santos urban sprawl, the light as pervading as ever, the glare obscuring the unpleasantness lying about at street level, catching the blades of grass in Morningwood Cemetery with a verdant shine. Amélie knew the path, but it had been many years since she had been able to visit, another strike against her perhaps. She looked across the countless headstones, scanning through various names of English, Dutch, German and Spanish origin until the French outlier was found.

Here he was.

Amélie stood for a moment, reading the name ‘Gérard Lacroix’ over and over again, until she finally knelt down with a murmured apology for being so overdue this visit.

“Old friend, dear lover, I’ve committed so many terrible ills since we parted so abruptly years ago,” she began in their native tongue, looking over the small offering of flowers that someone had left here, inwardly happy that someone had saw fit to maintain his grave in her absence. Their identity would remain a mystery to her “What’s worse, is that these are undue events that these people did not deserve to endure, but only because they tried to help me they suffered. It’s clear I have not belonged on this earth since you were taken from it.”

It would be foolish to expect clemency from an unmoving headstone, but despite not being a very spiritual person, Amélie felt like someone was watching over her. Was Gérard making an appearance, sensing she wished to cross over to the other side with him? Maybe, the thought was encouraging albeit morbidly so.

“Someone had been looking out for me since I was forced to join Talon, and she got me out of it but—but at such _cost_.” She sniffled, unable to keep emotion in check any longer “She went out of her way to keep me safe, to get me back to a normal life at such risk and… and I failed her, I just got her **_killed_** for all her hard work.”

Her hand, with a slight shake to it, pawed at the cloth bag where the pistol sat, waiting diligently “Gérard, please forgive me, but I think amid all of her trying to protect me and show me how to live like a normal human being again, I may have fallen for her. And like you, my existence near her has simply brought her to fatal harm once again. Therefore, I must—I must surrender the name you gave to me, and I must stop this before I continue to bring death in my wake.”

Whatever form the presence was watching her, it took on some kind of urgency when Amélie retrieved the gun from its material prison, pressing the muzzle to her temple “I will die as Amélie Guillard, but perhaps… you will find it in you to let me take Lacroix once more, when I join you.”

She took a deep breath.

Her finger coiled around the trigger.

And Amélie’s face found the earth, but not the way she expected, because she still retained cognisance and full mental and physical faculties… well as much of the latter as she could, given she had been disarmed in the blink of an eye and was face down pinned beneath a slight person’s weight. She didn’t have the wherewithal to ask, disorientated and trying to find her thought process once more when the intruder spoke.

“Hey, after all that Sombra did, I’m definitely not letting you blow your fucking brains out all over some grave. She put in a lot of work trying to keep you alive.”

“Ha—Hana?” she managed, and the weight was lifted off her body, letting her sit up to see Hana Song nonchalantly, systematically dissemble the pistol with fluid movements that Amélie could only pin to Ana Amari’s teachings. She knew that technique anywhere, although her own knowledge of it was rusty to non-existent at best.

Hana sprinkled the pistol parts onto the cloth bag it once occupied as a whole “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Trying to end my life so I don’t continue to hurt others by being near them.”

Amélie was reminded of their initial meeting in the recycling plant when Hana’s fist found her face.

“I’m asking again, the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she repeated, though in stressing it, the former Olympian realised it was rhetorical. Shuffling up to lean on the taller headstone to Gérard’s right, she looked up wearily at the gamer in silence. It annoyed the girl into throwing her hands and eyes upwards in exasperation “Fucking death seekers! Why are you giving up like that? Eomma—Angela didn’t just lie down and will her body to stop functioning when you shot eomma #1 months ago—”

Amélie winced, Hana pressed on.

“—she fought on, she went looking for you, she got answers even if as a medical professional she shoulda had different priorities than gunning after you; she kept going though despite that and eomma pulled through. Homeless-looking homeboy Jesse ‘Dumbass’ McCree sacrificed an arm for Mei and even though he’s probably not gonna ever do push-ups again, dude doesn’t give a fuck because Mei’s okay. Don’t just cave the fuck in and take the easiest, shittiest route out.”

“Such a motivational speaker,” Amélie muttered, rubbing her sore jaw as it recalled the Korean’s punches being far messier than the clean swings applied to it now “You’ve learned well from Ana.”

“And eomma too, she’s pretty much the reason I levelled up in not giving a shit and flipping out on gang dudebros.”

Despite her mental state, despite the misery she had entombed herself in, despite everything, Amélie couldn’t stop a small smile creep on her face, nodding in an approval that felt foreign to her—especially when being punched contributed to Hana’s development in a way “That’s true. You’ve come a long way. How’s the stab wound, if I may ask?”

“Eh, it’s fine. Healing,” Hana dismissively replied, waving it off but looking reasonably pleased that the Frenchwoman had relaxed a little in her presence “Satya’s a miracle worker. Once we got to the hospital she had no problem fixing me up properly. I can’t run around and do too much exercise for a few weeks while I knit together, but I can live. My day job is playing videogames anyways.”

There was a shared chuckle, but Amélie’s eyes were still glossy with sadness. Hana knelt down albeit with mild discomfort moving about the several stitches in her side, nudging the sniper’s shoulder “Y’know something? Sombra—way back when eomma got shot, she called me and was giving me all this shit about university, she was intimidating me at the time and I get that, but she pointed out something. I didn’t know what I was doing with my life, especially in university. Helluva drain on parental money, right?”

The older woman remained silent, simply watching the Korean.

“Yeah, well, that stuck with me. Buuuut, now that I saw all that shit going down, I kinda know what I want to do now, if the whole professional videogame streaming stuff on glitch.tv falls through.” Hana idly rubbed her nose “I got a Swedish buddy who’s interested in engineering, and I got chatting to her about like—prosthetics and shit. I wanna get into bioengineering and help people who might’ve lost limbs and give back some quality of life, that kind of stuff. Jesse’s also kind of the inspiration there; poor fucker looks lost mono-armed.”

“That’s very noble of you,” Amélie quietly answered with a faint nod, her smile weak but certainly made of admiration “The Amaris have been a wonderful influence on you, as has Dr Ziegler, I imagine.”

“Yeah, but the spark for realising that was ignited by that asshole roommate of yours!” Hana laughed, her grin wide and playful “And that’s why I’m here making sure that asshole in hospital doesn’t get discharged to a dead Frenchie splattered all over Morningwood, duh. Satya and eomma #2 tipped me off.”

“You succeeded,” Amélie sighed, pausing, and looking at Hana with a renewed fire in her eyes “Wait, Olivia—she’s _alive_?!”

“Olivia?” Hana blinked, standing back up “Nice, I got a name for her now. And yeah, she’s fine—well, I mean she’s still in ICU but my bae has her stable and recovering, but she’s fine. And speaking of ICU, Tracer asked me to pass on a message.”

Amélie scrambled to her feet, with Hana reaching down and yanking her upwards in the middle of it, and bristled with newfound energy “What is it?”

“Y’know Bolingbroke Penitentiary? They’re holding Doomfist dude there, and he wants to speak to you before they figure out what to do with him.”

“They’re hardly _executing_ him,” she huffed, narrowing her eyes “Based on what I have learned in Talon, they may just put him to use for the government’s own ends.”

“Yeah, probably,” Hana shrugged, turning on her heel towards the western pedestrian exit of the cemetery “Ain’t my business though. And hey, since I got my buddy Lucio in that hospital and my bae Satya too, I’ll call when Olivia’s good for visitors.”

She turned to Amélie and gave her a wink and a peace sign, sticking out her tongue impishly. All the Frenchwoman could do was smile and shake her head with a laugh. As Hana left the cemetery, she called out over her shoulder “Maybe you should hold onto the confession though! I think Olivia might rebreak her ribs out of joy if y’say you wanna date her!”

Chuckling good-naturedly, the former Olympian replied “ _Va te faire enculer, lapin!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that woman Lacroix is replaced by a reborn Amélie Guillard; final chapter next!


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loose ends are tied up; there is hope for the future yet.

Bolingbroke Penitentiary of San Andreas was a strange sort of homecoming, as far as one could be when travelling to a sun-baked and sun-broiled jail with equally toasted inmates within. Amélie looked about and noted the absence of change in these miserable halls but she supposed that to the American penal system, fairer treatment for prisoners was out of the question. If anything, she saw quality becoming more archaic, and almost medieval. It was merely months ago when she had been locked up here, when the FIB waltzed up to her with Olivia in tow and gave her freedom. And here she was, escorted to nearly the same place she had been kept, to the person who took the peace away from that freedom.

Akande Ogundimu, in full prisoner garb, gazed placidly at her, arms loosely clasped behind his back in his subtle but ever-confident stance. He nodded in greeting “Lacroix.”

“Guillard.”

Akande didn’t bat an eyelid at the correction “I’m glad you’re here.”

 “You have some **_nerve_** to ask for me here,” Amélie hissed, stamping towards him with her eyes narrowed “After you saw fit to either drag me back to mercenary servitude or kill me for having the gall to want to live normally.”

“I want to clear the air completely, and make things crystal between you and I,” he replied, unfazed by the hostility, having expected it in spades “You don’t have anything to worry about regarding Talon, myself, or anyone left of it.”

“Does that mean you finally have O’Deorain controlled?”

“No,” he grimaced, shaking his head “She’s a wildcard that I have no control over, but for what it’s worth, her obsession with breaking innocent people’s minds for entertainment would mean she would not chase you.”

“I suppose I would have to agree; I would hardly label myself ‘innocent’ as such,” Amélie let out a derisive huff, folding her arms “You didn’t seem to have much control over anything in the docks.”

“Because, truth be told, I most certainly had no control,” he admitted, taking her aback “Talon was fragmented in Reyes’ death and your disappearance, holding together just about in Liberty. Once you were out of city limits, it was non-existent. Sombra’s astute and quicksilver work made Talon a nonentity and gave the FIB and IAA a huge coup on a platter, all so she could free you. The Vagos had loyalty only to Reyes, since he commanded their respect better than a total foreigner like me demanding order and coherency, so they tended to chaos, and ironically Moira appealed to them in that manner. Your mission destroying the servers was a devastating success. The PMC as we knew it is essentially folded, absorbed by the government.”

“What about O’Deorain?”

“She is a loose end, but as far as I can tell, no one will exactly be jumping to protect her.” Akande almost looked relieved that this was the case.

“I see.”

The Frenchwoman listened, her hackles lowering as she took the information in. The suspicion of Talon crumbling apart despite Akande’s best efforts was confirmed, but what would happen to the rest of it? She remained silent, quietly encouraging the man to go on.

“Sombra was key to holding everything in place while I found some kind of glue to fix it back together; she was my real goal, truth be told, but because I knew her to be so fond of you, I needed to get to you first. That’s why I needed you both as a unit, I knew you would be inseparable.”

“I see,” she muttered, glancing away and pacing along the bulletproof glass leisurely “How… how long did you know she cared about me?”

“Ever since she originally was recruited for Talon, if I’m honest,” Akande answered “Though I’m not terribly good with such things as emotional attachment and feelings.”

“You looked up to Gabriel.”

“A fatherly figure of sorts is different to the yearning she had for you,” he chuckled dryly, rolling his eyes with a shrug “She is free to pursue that, I suppose. You’ve both won your freedom well and truly, so you both can figure that out between yourselves. Talon—or whatever’s left of it—will have nothing to do with either of you going forward.”

She looked at the musclebound prisoner, who simply smiled at her peacefully now that he let go of the chase and _snarled_ “I’m holding you to that. If you hurt a hair on her head again, I won’t hesitate to break my ‘live like a civilian’ rule and kill you.”

“I expect nothing less of you,” Akande retorted, unmoving from where he stood bar merely a quirk upwards of an amused brow. She didn’t reply to that, simply looking at how his reprieve almost mirrored Gabriel’s those fateful few months ago in the recycling plant when he too let go of his grudges. He folded his arms and angled his head to one side slightly “I am curious about one thing though; what of _your_ own feelings? You know by now how that hacker feels, but your own?”

“I believe I have fallen for her,” she conceded, unable to match his gaze, breathing in steadily “She did so much for me, cared so ardently; a protector in a city that hated me, a friend when all others spurned me. Well, thanks to your actions, we have new comrades in arms who’ve helped us—and we’ll certainly return the favour to them should it be required—but my initial point stands.”

The burly fellow smiled and nodded “Good, then you already have a head start on a new civilian life, as you wished for to begin with.”

A silence hung in the air between them for a minute, the information settling into the mercenary’s shoulders but as the former Talon sniper could tell, it was a benign relief. Akande looked free of troubles, content to show polite happiness on Amélie’s behalf for her blossoming feelings. The situation was odd, but he visibly showed no malice or ulterior motives towards her, wishing her peace. Sensing that the conversation was over, Amélie gathered herself and gave him one last wary look.

As she approached the door, the ex-Olympian heard Akande’s deep rumble call her name for the last time, following it up with a well-wishing of “Good luck with Sombra, I wish you both the best.”

Amélie halted and glanced over her shoulder “Her name is Olivia Colomar.”

 

* * *

 

“ _Hej hej_.”

“You are Hana’s friend…?” Amélie asked, stepping out of the tattoo parlour and looking at her contact curiously. Still dressed in dirty overalls that barely fit around surprisingly large muscles, covered in car oil for all the Frenchwoman could gather, this didn’t so much look like a university student as a beginner bodybuilder.

“That’s me!” she chuckled, and with a slap of her broad hand over Amélie’s she shook her vigorously “Brigitte is my name, and I can take you to that hospital where your girlfriend is. Hana would, but she’s helping Satya out.”

“I’m sure,” Amélie deadpanned, before adding a frown “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Yet,” Brigitte helpfully quipped, nudging her guest with her elbow. The effect wasn’t unlike a large Alsatian nudging a greyhound—comically burly versus long and thin meant for Amélie almost being shoved back into the tattoo parlour. Brigitte didn’t seem to know her own strength, judging by her walking on towards her car with blatant ignorance. “This is my ride! It is… _actually_ my other friend Ann’s but I need to tune it up for her. That’s why I’m driving it at the moment!”

Amélie blinked at the immensely vivid colour “It’s very… red. Are those cat ornaments hanging by the mirror?”

“This is a Dewbauchee Rapid GT Cabrio model, something Ann told me her friend bought for her with that quality Liberty City dollars,” Brigitte went on, opening the door and planting herself in the driver’s seat, patting the passenger one as she looked over at Amélie “Normally it has a roof, but Ann asked me to take it off since she likes the wind in her hair. I strongarmed it off because, hey, I need to tone up. Been training with—Ms Amari and her friend Zaryanova when I can get my time off to match theirs!”

“I see.” Indeed, there were some signs that there had been a metal frame overhead, but rather well welded-over. Amélie internally noted she probably shouldn’t have asked anything about the car, but this Brigitte girl would probably prattle on about the make regardless. She let the ostensibly Swedish girl talk about cars, university, her friends and all sorts as she was driven through serious Los Santos traffic to her destination.

 

* * *

 

“Oh, Olivia Colomar?” the dour looking doctor repeated, quirking a brow unseen under her blunt fringe “Yeah she’s through here. Dr Vaswani’s a miracle worker, even after being through some serious shit.”

Amélie sniffed at the woman’s equally blunt conduct and speech, anxiously curling her fingers in her pockets while trying to remain as indifferent and passive about the patient as possible “Mmm, being kidnapped and certainly traumatised if thankfully not physically would do a number on one’s mental health. But she, I assume, is still ‘trucking’ as you may say.”

“Europeans,” the doctor rolled her eyes, shaking her head as her short dark blue-tinged bob haircut tossed to and fro “I wouldn’t say that exactly, but yeah. I guess our surgeon’s made of stern stuff, or she probably finds the whole sticking people back together thing therapeutic, rather than further stress.”

“Hey!” an older man in similar doctor’s garb started, wagging his finger at her “Can you please be a little more respectful about Vaswani? Don’t be so coarse.”

“I’d give him shit, but Dr Hiraga is the head honcho. Follow me.”

Ambling with her broad gait, the Frenchwoman kept up easily with the brisk pace the younger doctor afforded, leading her into the ward not too far away from where Lena Oxton was once recuperating. The sun shone in, and the brightness, combined with the slightest temperature increase, made the former Talon sniper roll up her sleeves as an automatic reaction. The doctor noticed the bandage wound around her right forearm and frowned.

“Oh, not an injury; I recently got a tattoo.”

“Really?” she drawled, another quirk of her brow, as she folded her arms and stood slightly askance “I’ve heard some concerning things through the grapevine—Lacroix, right?”

“Guillard.”

“Right, right. Anyway, a little bunny rabbit hopped in and gave me a few clues,” the doctor waltzed around to check on the machines sustaining the frail-looking Olivia lying in bed. Satisfied with the sustained but slow improvement of her condition, she looked at Amélie once more “You can’t fault me for asking when she said she had to disarm you in Morningwood Cemetery.”

“You can understand if I say that I can’t exactly show you while it’s still leaking, correct?”

“You’re in a hospital! C’mon, give it a break, I’ve got a tattoo too, I can fix it up right after. We’ve got plastic wrap to keep it covered after a clean.”

Amélie shuffled around, not exactly wanting to bare the tattoo that she got for extremely sentimental reasons to be seen by anyone else before the person it was suggested by. Perhaps that might deflect her attention away? She shook her head “I… when Olivia and I worked as mercenaries, she said I would look… cool, with this tattoo. I declined then, owing to the defining mark such a thing would leave on me when I required… ah, discretion—”

“Look, if shit’s classified, that’s fine. I can handwave that. Can I ask why you decided now?”

Amélie walked towards her, only because it brought her closer to Olivia’s side, and looked at her with such bare longing she didn’t really have to qualify it with words but did so anyway “…because she went to such lengths to protect me from the fallout of leaving the company, above and beyond. Even when that danger stared us in the face she jumped into it with such absence of fear that she didn’t care for the consequences, only that I was safe.”

“Wow… so you fell hard, huh?”

“She had done so for me many years ago, but never expected anything in return. Olivia operated under a codename and did so to the point where I had only found out her name very recently, but even so she bared her heart to me in her actions. She never pushed for reciprocation and always remained respectful towards me. After everything that’s happened, all my own personal grief and lingering issues have finally been put to rest…” Amélie idly held her right shoulder and placed her right hand on her hip, glancing downwards from the hospital bed with a fragile smile, coupled with a happy sort of welling up in her eyes “It let me alone with thoughts and emotions that cannot deny the wish to indeed reciprocate. I am only afraid I am too late to do so.”

“Jesus Christ, what a romantic,” the doctor chuckled, nodding once “I understand why then you’re reluctant to show me the new ink. That’s so much meaning I might die of the diabetes that sweetness induces. Though I guess that’s a tasteless joke to make as a medical professional.”

“In the field of hired military work and medicine alike, humour buoys one’s sanity when all else fails.”

“A romantic and a poet. You’re definitely from France,” she quipped, walking towards the hall “I’ve overstepped into your private time with her. You don’t need to worry though, Olivia’s a fighter, and hearing you go on about that will make her heal faster. Proven fact.”

“Thank you…?”

“Takemi, but for your own longevity we shouldn’t see each other too soon, y’know what I mean?”

And with that, the doctor was gone.

“Hey.”

Amélie whirled about to see Olivia’s pale face faintly brighten with a weak smile, and felt a surge of relief and joy so pure she could have sworn adrenaline briefly made an appearance in her system “Olivia? Olivia you’re—you’re awake.”

“Only for a few minutes araña,” the hacker wheezed, eyelids fluttering “Can’t talk much.”

“Okay, yes or no questions that you can answer without talking,” Amélie began, to which the Mexican woman nodded quickly “First things first, did you hear what I was talking about with the doctor?”

The hacker formerly known to Talon operatives as Sombra nodded.

“…then that leaves two more questions; would you accept me as—as a romantic partner?” She added in a meeker tone of voice “…as a girlfriend?”

She’d never seen a hospitalised person nod so exuberantly albeit with limited scope of movement, and to that she sighed in relief and smiled “Last question; may I kiss you? It will not be of much passion or energy until you’re allowed to leave.”

Olivia nodded once more, looking like for all the world a grievously ill patient that just won the biggest jackpot in the lottery recorded with the stupidly wide grin on her face. Amélie took a deep breath, pacing two steps over to bring her to the hacker’s immediate side, and carefully lowered herself using the hospital bed’s side railings to leverage herself down, and gently pressed her lips to Olivia’s. She wasn’t allowed back too far, enough that her nose still brushed by the injured woman, gazing into deep, uniquely dark-blue eyes. With all the space in her lungs she could manage, she murmured softly.

“When I’m out, let’s make up for the lost time here.”

 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I NEED TO STOP WITH THE FUCKING MULTICHAPTER FICS HOLY SHIT.


End file.
